Ribbed For Her Pleasure

Yester eve, I was riding in the malibenz and a memory hit me. That ever happen to you? Some far off shyt you’d forgotten about, tucked away in your mind or whatever hits you?? Knocks the breath out of you?? Well that’s exactly what happened to me. I have two posts in the hopper and could use either of those today. But I want to share this memory because it’s funny and scary all the same.

It was 199_. Let’s just say I still had teen in my age. It was one of our first dates. And somehow we ended up at his place. Yeah, right, somehow. Did I mention how young I was?? Did I mention that he was about 4 years older than me? Nope, we didn’t screw. So you’ll get no HOB details here!!! And I’ll leave it at that because I know a lot of you know this man so I don’t want to even semi-out him on my page. Cus for real, that would be completely mean spirited. So focus on the story, not the man. In fact, to help you keep him nameless and faceless, we shall henceforth call him Joe.

We’re sitting there. I think we’re watching the Jon Stewart show. Remember he had a show on NBC (I think) way before his time on Comedy Central. He didn’t wear a suit, always a v-neck sweater. OK, so we’re sitting there watching. As best I can recall, out of nowhere, Joe decides he should read me a story. Uh, he’s of the artsy type. Sorta hip-hop smoothed out on the artsy guy tip.

I won’t go all up into the story. To be brief, it’s starts with a man waking up, looking over to his bedside table and reading the outside of a condom wrapper, “Ribbed for her pleassure.” As the story continues, the guy gets up and goes to meet his girlfriend for lunch. They end up screwing. But then he goes home. The main character showers in anticipation of another visitor. He’s cheating on his girlfriend. But the way the ‘other’ woman is described, with such detail, it becomes clear that this is the person he’s really into.

Remember, I am young and pretty dumb. Just want to put that out there. See, I admit it. I’m still a bit dumb but nowhere near as dumb as I was back then. But isn’t living life about learning and applying those lessons?

Back to the story. The main character does his thing with his mistress. Somewhere in this, it’s exposed. His mistress, the one whose smell intoxicated him, the one who he couldn’t wait to see, the one who he couldn’t wait to taste, to be with, well it was a man!!! At the end of the story, the main character finds himself reflecting as he once again read “Ribbed for her pleasure.”

Skip to about two years ago. My mother, Gawd bless her unexposed heart, asked me about Joe. “whatever happened to Joe?” I told her there was something odd about Joe. I had no evidence, but the last few times I’d seen him, I got an uneasy feeling. Moms, poor moms doesn’t believe that a man can behave and be like Joe and possibly like men. She sincerely believes all gay men are hair stylists who direct the choir at their church. She’s so out of touch. Moms asked me why I’d say such a thing. Sure, Joe’d been quite the whore, but that couldn’t mean he was, dare I say it cus she refused to–GAY. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, had no real evidence, just a feeling. Maybe I was bitter?? Nerp. We hadn’t had a relationship in years. But it was just a feeling, ya know?? Which is why, when I had that memory last evening, it all sort of came together. Without me even being focused there.

Back in 199_ we knew nothing about DL men. At that point, I’d never even met an out-of-the-closet gay person. We didn’t typically have those in Detroit and the let’s-be-gay fad hadn’t hit Howard’s campus yet. At least not in my circle. I didn’t think much of the story. Forgot about it in fact. Now, y’all know if that had happened ten years later and I’d been as young, I would never have gone out with that man again. Right?? I won’t go into the intricacies of the resulting relationship cus again, I don’t want to ‘out’ anyone. But trust me when I tell ya, if he was/is gay, he did everything in his power to have the opposite persona. But isn’t that what ‘they’ do?

And maybe he was/is not gay. I wouldn’t know because he and I aren’t cool and haven’t been for a while. But does a straight man read a story like that to some little girl (cus I was one) you barely know?? Was he sending a message?? Or was it just a creative expression?? I’ll never know. But boy did that memory shake me and make me giggle, in an uncomfortable, dirty-old-ma-please-stop-looking-at-me way.