Thursday, May 3, 2012

A Fool and Her Honey - Dina



 
What is he up too?
I don't care who you are, where you came from and how good you can work your goody box; if you're a woman who's ever been in a relationship, you've been cheated on. And what I want to know is, why is it that heffas think just because ten years pass by, you forgot all about the time they slept with your damn man, and then they wanna be grinnin' in your face like the two of you are best friends? I wanted to punch Vanisha Yarborough dead in the jaw when I saw her earlier today.  I was stopping by the Food Lion to pick up a cup of yogurt on my way to church and she spotted me from across the parking lot.
"Dina!" she called.  I looked up and saw her getting out of her car but I didn't have my glasses on to readily identify her, not that that would have made a whole lot of difference. Since I've done some of everybody's hair in Laveen, I was thinking she could have been any old body, so I waited the few seconds it took for her to come into focus.
"Damn!" I mumbled under my breath.
"Girl how you doing?"
That skanky heffa Vanisha
"Hey Vanisha." I gave a half smile like I'd let bygones be bygones, but just like that, I felt disdain bubbling in my stomach, wanting to turn into spit and be hurled out of my mouth towards her. The Christian part of me fought against it and won. Even if I wasn't a Christian, I don't think I could ever spit in somebody's face.
"You look good!" she comments circling me with her eyes. I refrain from rolling mine.
"Thanks."
"So what're you doing now? How's Camm?"
Camm is my ex-husband, and I don't care that we're no longer together, I still can't appreciate what the two of them did behind my back, and practically in my face.
"I have no idea," I shrug. "Look, I'm in a bit of a rush; I'm trying to get to church on time." I say digging in my purse for nothing in particular, but it makes me look busy and in a rush.
"Oh okay! Don't let me hold you then! Look me up on Facebook so we can catch up!" She backs away from me headed to another store in the strip mall.
"Alright girl; take care."
Seeing Vanisha wrecked my morning mood, and that's just like the devil. Soon as you purpose in your heart that you're going to have a good day no matter what, here he comes with some foolishness to make you regret getting out of bed at all. 
I grabbed my yogurt, got back in my car and tried to refocus on having a great day, but my mind had a mind of its own and travelled back ten years when I was young, dumb, naive and so in love with Camm, I didn't believe he had a fault anywhere in his being. And like blinded fool, I ignored what was right in front of me.
Vanisha and I had been friends all through high school, with me envying her style, her smile and her happy-go-lucky attitude. I don't know how we got to be friends because she was one of those fast-tailed girls who'd made a name for herself by having sex with various boys after school, and sometimes during school when she skipped classes. I wasn't interested in having sex with anybody, but I found her taboo adventures exciting.
"Girl, he got a big ol' dick," she told me about so many of the boys we went to school with - just pick a name. "We stayed after yesterday and did it in the girls' locker room in the ninth grade gym."
"For real?" My eyes had to be stretched as wide as the moon. "What do it feel like though?"
She jerked her head back like I was asking the most asinine question in the world. "It felt good!"
I didn't know how to interpret that, and I wasn't ready to find out for myself, so I'd have to take her word for it. By the time we'd graduated, she'd had more sex partners than my momma had years of her life.
Even with me knowing how loose she was, I thought our friendship was stronger than her promiscuity, so I had no problem with her meeting and knowing about Camm.  I'd met Camm when I was eighteen, walking home from Vanisha's house after she had spent eight hours braiding my hair. He was hot and sweaty from chasing a basketball around on the court, but seemed smitten to meet my acquaintance in passing. We hit it off right away, and I found him adorably sweet, handsome and respectful. After a couple months of dating, we were inseparable when he wasn't in class. I gave that man my heart, my soul the very essence of my womanhood. And he graciously and gently took it. It wasn't long before I got pregnant, and although we were young, we decided marriage was the right thing to do.
My Cheating Ex - Camm
Vanisha was the maid of honor in my wedding, stood right there staring at my coochie when I gave birth to my baby girl Tiara, and held my hand when I couldn't stop crying after Tiara's underdeveloped lungs wouldn't allow her to live past two days. Vanisha was my homegirl, my sista-friend, my ace-boon-coon.
Before I turned twenty, Camm and I had two more kids, Emanuel and Lamont (how's that for catching up with sex) and were both working full-time jobs, trying our best to make a life for ourselves and the kids. Camm ended up dropping out of college to become a full-time dad, husband and employee of Anheuser Busch . It wasn't the best life, but I was happy being Mrs. Camm Allen
Now here is where I started messing up. See, Camm was my first. All I'd learned about sex, or what I thought sex should be, I learned from Vanisha's explicit stories, erotica books, movie scenes and misogynistic video of girls shaking their booties on the BET channel. My mother was far too prudish to have any real sex conversations with me other than the instructions to keep my panties up.
Like every woman before me who's opened her legs for the man she loves, I wanted to sex him out of his mind. From what I'd seen on videos and such, I was expecting a certain reaction out of Camm, I wanted to hear some 'ooohs' and 'ahhhhs',  some 'oh babies' and 'oh my gods!'. I wanted to see his face contort uncontrollably and hear a series of cuss words leave his lips before he would collapse in a heap on top of me panting, "damn Dina girl!" But most times when Camm and I made love, he was silent, and rhythmic - never calling my name, never losing himself in a series of gasps, never having to catch his breath. His expression always looked stoic and disengaged; nothing like I'd seen on TV.
 I tried to provoke his responses by adding my own sound effects, moaning his name to stroke his ego, although honestly, I hadn't really felt anything to make me do that. Nonetheless, I thought if I'd made him believe he was puttin' it down, it would make him more responsive. Well, it didn't work, and when it didn't, what did my stupid behind do? I asked Vanisha for some sex tips.
"I don't know what I'm doing wrong," I complained day, standing in the middle of her apartment dancing to videos.  "He just seems like he doesn't enjoy it."
"Girl you gotta know how to work that thang!" she laughed, twisting a single leg in a circular motion and rotating her hips in a way that she probably could make some money for if she was in a strip joint. "I mean, what do you be doing?"
I shrugged. "What you mean?"
"You don't just be laying there like a board do you?"
"No," I answered embarrassed. "I be into it, moving and stuff," I said trying to defend myself. "But it's like," I shrugged again. "I don't know - like he's bored or something."
"Hmph! I don't know what kinda sex y'all be having that he be acting bored. Do you be going down on him?" She'd asked just as easily as if she would have been asking for a stick of chewing gum.
"I mean I...we...." I didn't know how to answer that question, ashamed to admit that I'd put my husband's thing-a-ling in my mouth, but at the same time, ashamed to say that I didn't.
"Maybe you need to do that," she commented when I couldn't get any words to come out of my mouth. "Girl men love that," she grinned and nodded. "If that don't make him cuss, you're definitely doing something wrong."
Vanisha and Camm - Right in front of my face!
It wasn't long after that conversation that all of a sudden Vanisha started coming over all the damn time. "Oh, I'll watch the kids," she'd offer. "Girl I was just dropping by; I didn't want nothing," she'd say. "You mind if I do a load of laundry over here at your house? My washer won't spin."
I, being the unsuspecting dummy that I was back then let her conniving ass come right on in. And like a vulture waiting for a wild animal to die, she circled a few times, then came in for a landing - right in my and Camm's bed. I never actually caught them doing the do, and I guess that's why I ignored what was right in front of me - believing that Camm could and would only make love to me. I trusted him; I trusted her. When I became suspicious for obvious reason and questioned Camm about it, he did what all men do, deny and lie. Camm made up outrageous stories about how it was that he was supposed to be at work, but ended up at her house first because she'd called asking for a jump. And how he was just sitting at home minding his business while I was out getting a pedicure when she came over asking if she take a shower at our house because her water got cut off.  And how... well I don't want to think about it anymore, but let's just say my momma raised a damn fool. Except I didn't realize it then like I do now.
I never realized until today just how hurt I still was over the thought that Camm had screwed another woman, my best friend at that.  I also realize now how much I hate her and Camm for it. I thought I had let that mess go, especially after Camm and I divorced (for a number of reasons, which she happened to not be one of them because like I said, I was too stupid to trust and act on what I innately knew. Now here I was with a cup of yogurt and a bottle of orange juice in my hands, headed to the house of the Lord with a heart full of hate.
My Honey - Bertrand. 
"Work on me Jesus," I whisper as a prayer, because I don't want to hate anybody, but I don't know how to get rid of that hurt and betrayal. "Help me Lord," I add, because tears are now welling in my eyes. Not specifically because of my recollections of Vanisha and Camm, but because of the panties that I found tucked in Bertrand's drawer the other week, and I'm wondering am I being a fool all over again. 

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