Insanity

  “You didn’t ask for it either.”

  “Well, I’m asking now, if you’re gonna ask.”

  “I have to show you how to do it first.”

  Bryant stared at her. “What, you’re gonna give me a private lesson on it?”

  Too much damn talking, she thought. He’s busting my groove.

  Queen stretched out on her back and said, “Okay . . . I’m just gonna act like you’re devouring me like you devour your food . . .”

  She elevated her knees, spread her legs, and began to squirm and moan as if Bryant was already pleasing her.

  “Mmm hmmm, right there. That’s how you do it, baby . . .”

  Bryant watched her and shook his head, chuckling. “That’s crazy.”

  Queen ignored him and kept going with it. She even jerked forward as if an imaginary tongue had stroked her weak spot.

  “Unnnhh, ooohh, bay-bee!”

  Outside of the room, Jackie walked in with one of her girlfriends and couldn’t help overhearing Queen’s performance through the thin apartment walls.

  Jackie shook her head. “That’s so embarrassing to walk into the house and hear that. What if you were my mother? I am just so ready to get my own place.”

  Her girlfriend laughed, tall and bodacious.

  “Aww, girl don’t even hate like that. Appreciate and participate,” she joked. “Sounds like home girl is gettin’ served.”

  Jackie continued to shake her head and paced toward her room. At least her room was on the other side on the apartment. But her friend stood still to hear more of Queen’s moaning.

  “What are you doing?” Jackie whispered to her tersely.

  Her friend shrugged innocently. “Nothing.”

  “Mmmpt hmm, come on. I’m ready to leave then,” Jackie complained. She was already walking back to the front door with her keys out.

  “Aww, girl, stop being a party-pooper,” her girlfriend commented as she walked away.

  Back inside of Queen’s room, she began to finger the hard nipples of her breasts and lick around the edges of her glossed lips with her tongue. Her acts of seductive were beginning to turn Bryant on as he watched her, leaning up on his elbow.

  “Did you just hear your roommate come in?” he asked her quietly.

  “Fuck herrr,” Queen moaned, continuing to enjoy herself.

  Bryant chuckled, dripping with excitement. He asked her, “Does it feel that good?”

  She reached out and grabbed his head into her breasts.

  “Try it. Drive downtown, baby. Take me downtown.”

  What the hell, Bryant thought to himself. I can’t let her freak herself out on her own. Shit!

  He slowly stuck out his tongue at the tip and began to lick around the nipples of her erect titties, gathering them into his hands to cup them to his mouth.

  Queen quieted her moaning to check for his tongue skills. His twisting, lollipop licks were impressive.

  Oh shit, I wasn’t expecting that, she had to admit.

  He then slid his tongue below her breasts and tickled her rib cage.

  Queen closed her eyes in silent anticipation.

  Bryant worked his tongue over and down her side, sending more tickling sensations up her spine and to her mind, where her moans of pleasure became real.

  “Oooooh,” she let out softly. “Low-wer.”

  He traced a path with his tongue to her waistline.

  Damn it! Is he sure he doesn’t know what he’s doing? I know he better not fucking stop! she told herself.

  Where she may have taken a more experienced lover for granted, Bryant’s alleged inexperienced forced her to pay more attention to his every move. The uncertainty drove her excitement and made her more anxious, especially when Bryant slid his descending tongue into the crease of her left leg.

  Motherfucker, if you don’t eat this pussy while you’re down there . . .! Just a little bit to the right, she mentally guided him.

  She was trembling he was teasing her so badly. But she fought to keep her hands off of him. It was more exciting to wonder what he’d do next, while she continued to clench the bed sheets in her balled fists.

  Just a little bit more to the right. Just a little bit to the right. PLEEASSSEE!

  Her body was so worked up, that when his tongue slid into the direction of her engorged clit and hit it, tears of joy squirted from her eyes and rolled toward her temples. But she forced herself to take it like a grown woman and not scare him away from her bliss in a panic. She just wanted him to stay there a little bit longer with his tongue . . . a little bit longer with his tongue . . . a little bit . . . lonnng-gerrrrr . . .

  “OOOOOOOOHHHHHH!”

  She shook, shimmered and locked her legs around his neck to stop him from escaping, just like she had imagined it. But the man never tried to free himself. He submitted between her legs, like carnivorous prey, and made her conquer all the more enjoyable.

  The Tillis Family

  July 1998

  “So, I get to meet the whole family now, hunh?” Bryant asked Queen. He smiled, while driving his Mercedes at close to three o’clock on a sunny and warm afternoon.

  Queen smiled back at him from the passenger seat.

  “Then I get to meet yours?” she reminded him.

  “Oh, you could have met my family a while ago if you weren’t trying to play dodge ball me,” Bryant told her.

  Queen shook her head, still grinning. “Please don’t start up with that up again. It’s over with now.”

  Both dressed in summer shorts and t-shirts, she had invited Bryant over to her family’s Fourth of July cook out at her Aunt Justina and Uncle Mario’s house on the northeast side of Baltimore. The McCutcheons were the wealthier side of the family, living more comfortably than the rest of Tillis clan on the west side, and Queen felt safer introducing him there.

  Bryant dropped his grievance and moved on.

  “So, how many aunts, uncles and cousins do you have?”

  Queen thought about it. “Two aunts, one uncle, some in-laws, and ummm . . . seven cousins, plus three or four.”

  Bryant looked confused. “Plus three or four? What are you talking about?”

  “You know, cousins from your in-laws and stuff, who aren’t really your blood cousins, but you call them your cousins because you’ve been around them so long.”

  “Oh, yeah, everybody has those.”

  “But that’s just on my mom’s side of the family,” she told him. “I don’t really know my father’s side. I could have like, five more aunts and uncles and twenty cousins running around Baltimore. But what about you? How many aunts, uncles and cousins do you have?”

  He shook his head. “My family’s a lot smaller than yours. I only have one aunt, one uncle and three cousins. My mom was an only child, and my father has one sister, so that’s it for me. I got one aunt and one uncle in-law.”

  “Well, does your in-law have brothers and sisters?”

  Bryant shrugged. “Yeah, but I haven’t been around them, so I don’t know them like that. But my family has a lot of close friends though,” he added. “Now, if you count all of our friends as family . . .”

  Queen cut him off and said, “No, only family is family.”

  When they arrived at her aunt’s house, the street parking was impossible.

  “We’re gonna have to park and walk a couple of blocks to house. Unless you get lucky as someone’s pulling out of a spot,” Queen commented.

  Bryant grinned. “That’s why it’s better to live out in the suburbs. You can park up on the damn lawn at my parent’s house, but not in brick-city Baltimore. And these little lawns they have here are small like flowerbeds.”

  “Whatever,” Queen blew him off as she continued to look for parking.

  The Baltimore neighborhood was filled with red-brick and gray-stoned row-houses. The small front lawns were split by cement walkways that extended down to the sidewalk. Visitors parked their cars wherever they could find an open spot on the one-way streets, whi
le the residents used one-car garages in a small back driveway.

  After rounding the block twice and not finding anywhere to park, Bryant finally settled for an open spot a block up at the corner.

  Queen looked up at the NO PARKING sign to her right.

  “Can you park here? It says No Parking.”

  Bryant shrugged. “It’s the Fourth of July, girl, nobody’s writing parking tickets today. It’s not like we’re parked in front of a fire hydrant.”

  Queen stared at him a second to make sure. “O-kaaay,” she hummed as a final warning.

  As they walked the extra block back toward the house, Bryant asked her, “So, how are you planning to introduce me?”

  “As Bryant Thompson.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What else you want me to say?”

  He thought about it as they walked. “Thee Bryant Thompson.”

  Queen grinned and said, “Please. And how do you plan to introduce me to your family?”

  “Are you kidding me? You’re the Queen.”

  She stopped walking and pictured the whole scene. “Oh my God. It’s times like those when I really hate my name. ‘No, really, what’s her name?’” she mocked.

  Bryant broke up laughing. “Hey, that’s part of the deal of being special. And Queen Tillis is extra. But you’ve been living with it all your life, so you should be used to it by now.”

  Once they made it to the house, some of Queen’s younger cousins were out on the front lawn and sidewalk.

  “Ay, Queenie? Who he?” her young cousin Savannah asked of Bryant. She was fifteen and loaded with body. Her short white skirt and yellow t-shirt could barely contain it all. Even Bryant had to look.

  Damn, this young girl is packing, he noted. She needs to give Queen some of that.

  “Stop minding grown folks business, Vannah,” Queen told her without stopping.

  “I was just asking who he was.”

  At thirteen and much smaller than her, her little brother George laughed.

  “Shut up, boy,” she told him with a shove.

  As George tripped and fell to the grass, Sheila, an even younger cousin, laughed at that.

  “Kids,” Queen commented.

  She led Bryant up the cement steps and walkway toward the house, where another small flight of steps led to a glass storm door. They walked into a crowded living room of family members sitting and standing around clear plastic covered sofas and chairs. A deep maroon carpet covered the floor, and elephant sculpture lamps on glass stands surrounded the sofas. Against the far wall, a grainy bootleg DVD of Eddie Murphy’s Dr. Dolittle was playing on a giant screen TV.

  Queen’s family was so into Eddie Murphy’s latest movie that no one noticed her and Bryant walked into the house; they were all too busy laughing.

  Queen recognized the movie and frowned. “Who went and got a bootleg copy of Dr. Dolittle already? Bubby?”

  “You know it,” her cousin Kenyatta confirmed. Three years younger than Queen, in a red t-shirt and black jeans, she sat on the small sofa right next to them at the doorway with a plate of food in her hands. Her plate was filled with macaroni and cheese, potato salad, barbecue chicken, string beans, and a buttered biscuit. She had just gotten it before they walked in.

  Her older brother, Big James Bubby, sat at the end of the longer sofa on the other side of the room. A massive young man in sports gear, he smiled and nodded at Queen and her company, holding his own plate of food. A leg of barbecue chicken in his mouth kept him from speaking.

  “Hey Queenie, take your friend and go on in there and get you something to eat,” her uncle Mario told her. In his early fifties, Mario had shaved off his hair for a shiny and smooth dome. He did it to stop from having to deal with balding. Wearing a mint green, summer Polo shirt, he sat next to oversized nephew with other relatives and family friends.

  Queen grinned at him and made her way to the dining room, where the table was filled with food, drinks, paper plates, plastic cups, forks, knives and spoons. More relatives and family friends were there, loading up on their plates, including Queen’s young mother, Mercille.

  “Well, it’s about time you got here,” her mother complained. “You’re always fashionably late.”

  “You’re the one who named her Queen,” her older sister snapped. Like Uncle Mario, Queen’s Aunt Allison was in her early fifties, and wearing a short styled wig to deal with her hair issue. But her mother, Mercille, had just reached her early forties, and she had started to dye her hair jet black while continuing to straighten it.

  Queen smiled at their usual sister bickering and stepped up to greet them both with hugs.

  “And who is this?” her Aunt Allison asked, referring to Bryant.

  Queen stepped back to make his introduction. “This is Bryant Bailey Thompson,” she told them. “And this is my mother Mercille and my Aunt Allison.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Bryant greeted them.

  Allison looked at Mercille and smirked. “Well, excuse me. Mr. Bryant Bailey Thompson. Well, that sounds serious.”

  Queen hooked his arm in hers and squeezed it, grinning for confirmation. It was serious.

  “He looks tall and good too,” Allison added. “I guess he just don’t know how crazy Queen is yet, hunh?”

  Bryant forced a smile and a chuckle at the awkward statement.

  Mercille shook her head and leapt to her daughter’s defense.

  “My daughter’s no crazier than anybody else in here.”

  Her defense didn’t sound much better, so Queen moved on to distance herself from both of them.

  “Anyway, let’s just get you some food.”

  She grabbed several paper plates from the table and began to load them up for herself and Bryant.

  “You know she can’t cook either, right?” her aunt continued.

  Queen stopped what she was doing and said, “Aunt Allison, please. Mom . . .”

  Mercille stepped in again to her daughter’s defense. “Allison, cut it out.”

  “Cut what out? A man needs to know who he’s getting involved with.”

  “Well, that’s why she brought him over here to meet us today. But you don’t need to scare the man to death with lies and carrying on,” Mercille told her.

  “Lies? Who lied? Your daughter is crazy,” Allison insisted. “She focus on things that nobody else focus on.”

  Queen shook her head and finished making their plates before she led Bryant through the kitchen and onto an elevated deck outside. The wooden stood above the driveway, where they sat in a pair of black plastic picnic chairs.

  “What was that all about?” Bryant teased. In a sick way, he thought it was all comical. Queen’s folks were as outspoken as she was.

  She took a deep breath before answering him. “With my family, nobody really got an education, they all work regular jobs and stuff. So, with everything that I’m doing with school and whatnot, and the way I go after what I want, my aunt has always considered me crazy. And she always complains about how I can’t cook, especially if we’re all around food.”

  Bryant laughed it off and began to eat. “You mean this stuff?”

  Queen grinned. She told him, “Actually, my aunt started off by calling my mom crazy for doing so much for me, when she really couldn’t afford it.”

  Bryant nodded with a mouthful. “But education at all costs is a good thing, right?” he mumbled.

  “I guess if you’re into moving up in the world. But if you’re complacent with where you are . . .” She shrugged. “Then I guess you wouldn’t understand it.”

  She took a bite of her own plate of food.

  Back inside the dining room, Mercille asked her sister, “Why do you keep doing that to my baby?”

  Allison looked appalled by the question. She answered after she chewing down her potato salad. “Girl, are you kidding me? That child needs to be brought back down to earth. You shouldn’t have even named her no damn Queen. She’s not my damn Queen. Sounds like a dog’s nam
e.”

  “Oh, just cut it out, Allison,” Mercille told her.

  “No I won’t. Now you know good and well your child walks around us like we’re all embarrassing to her, just because she had a little extra schooling. And I feel like I paid for most of it with as much as you asked me for help, trying to get her little uniforms and stuff.”

  “And you think she doesn’t know that?” Mercille questioned.

  “Evidently not, because instead of her keeping a job to start to pay us back with, her crazy behind goes back to school. And for what, four more years of poverty?”

  “It’s only two more years,” Mercille corrected her.

  “Yeah, on top of what, sixteen? See I can count.”

  Overhearing them argue, Justina, the middle sister, walked down into her dining room from upstairs and immediately sided with Mercille..

  “The more education, the more security, Allison,” Justina reasoned. She was actually the smallest sister in size, where Allison was the oldest and biggest in every way, a bully with it.

  She grimaced and said, “Oh, so you think educated people don’t go broke? Because I know plenty of them who never even paid off their college loans, and they end up in debt for their entire lives. I mean, at least I know when enough is enough. But some of them so-called educated people are just plain dumb, buying and borrowing until they got no way out of anything. And then they try to twist their noses all up in the air to you like they’re so smart.”

  Overhearing his sister-in-law, who refused to be reasoned with, Mario began to chuckle from where he was sitting on the sofa and added fuel to her fire. He had moved up in the Baltimore construction industry with more than thirty years of experience and no higher education himself.

  He yelled, “Get ’em, Allison! I work with some educated fools on the job right now. And we’re always training them and retraining them when they come in. But yet the company starts them off with more money and higher positions.”

  “Yeah, so they can pay for them college loans and get themselves into more debt when they start buying houses and cars that they can’t really afford,” Allison calculated. “Oh, it’s all a big business. But we’re supposed to be the dummies, right?”