The club is like a nasty-ass hoe. You really don’t want to be associated with it, but when you’re all up in it—ain’t nothing better. I hate the club because I love the club, and I know that if I find myself in the club, I end up acting a muthafucking fool; far too drunk off of far too many drinks which were all far too expensive, attempting to interact with far too many ladies who are either far too fine, dumb or ugly for me to fuck with. It’s a beautiful paradox. The club demands a commitment to superficiality that most people are not financially secure enough to be subscribing to. The Hip-Hop videos serve as paradigm. One is expected to come looking—first and foremost—“grown and sexy.” If you have no clout or connections, you’ll be waiting amongst the rest of the commoners who will pay at least twenty bucks to gain entry past the sentry. To party properly, one should get a bottle and a couch in V.I.P.. The sharper your garb and the more exclusive the locale in which you drink, the better you’ll do trying to cut in the meat market. However, when you realize that most of these people in here are just like you, swinging from check-to-check like vines, you quickly come to notice the insecurity, the denial and the sadness in many peoples’ faces. Everyone is perpetrating. People have responsibilities they should be tending to, bills they should be paying off, kids they should be rearing and retirement funds they should be investing in. Instead, we are all here living in a fool’s paradise—paying $12+ per drink and $300+ per bottle to walk from the Hip-Hop room, to the Salsa/Meringue room, finally ending up in the Techno room—just to game and grind the most obnoxious possible lot of people. A man takes a moment to figure his debt-to-floss ratio just to make sure he’ll have enough to get that telly he just promised this young tender. A Salvadorian lady grabs a light-skinned lady by her hair and tells her to “stay the fuck away from her husband.” A girl too pretty to be throwing up is doing just that. An inebriated bartender has poured over $500 in free drinks on her own. A young man walks in the entrance only to faint within 12 seconds. A couple on the dancefloor is damned-near simulating sex. Another couple in the men’s bathroom is actually having sex. A young man is standing in line at a nearby fast-food restaurant reviewing the numbers he got from the young tenders that evening, 96.7% of which will end being false numbers, stank bitches, ugly skanks or broads that are just plain full of shit. But all of them had fun for the moment, and that is the ultimate achievement of the club. Forget it all for a bit. Be V.I.P. for one night. Escapism. Present-time orientation. No matter how low the dollar limbos or how much high-skill level employment steps from the country, people will always celebrate the weekend’s arrival like Debbie Deb and Zhané.

I went to the club with my homie Jabari on a Friday in February. Black History Month and Black night at the club. Culture. I had a long-standing invite from a friend of mine who heads security at one of DC’s premier clubs. I finally decided to iron up some of the Polo shit I never wear and arrive fly on the scene about 11:16pm. I had never been to the superclub Ibiza prior to this. I’ve been to all of their competition around town; DC Live, Platinum, H2O, Love, all of which are nice, but not easily distinguishable from one another. Ibiza is the same shit. It opened the July 4th weekend of 2007 with Kim Kardashian as the host, so you already know the debt-to-floss ratio is weighted heavily in favor of debt. The lighting was better than I knew in most clubs, but other than that, I was tranquillo-como camillo and trying my best not to let the sensory onslaught get me in too festive of a mood. Once I get festive and manifest the weekend demon, it is beyond my power or ability for reversal thereof. After doing the lemming thing around the club, stopping along the way to dance with women you accidentally hit like pinball bumpers, Jabari and myself ended up in the Salsa/Merengue room on the first floor. It was near the coat check, so it had a rotating cast of women coming towards the Salsa like mosquitoes do the bug zapper. Bzzzt. We, of course, belly up to the bar and look at the bartender, say, “Damn,” and then look back at each other. The lady pouring hooch was bad. She was obviously mulatto, but was it Filipino and Black or Black and something else? She had an Asian-eye-thing going on. Homegirl was jacked though. Not none of that vein popping shit, but definitely sculpted and defined like those cool statues of Michelangelo’s. She looked like she could kick my ass and I’d like it. Beyond that, she was affable and gave us service with a smile, assistance of which has seemed to have gone the way of the LaserDisc. We get two Sapphire and tonics and as she gives them to me, she tells me that I’ve got a fan in my fanclub behind me. I tip her really well, defying racial stereotypes the world over, hand Jabari his drink, turn around and lean up against the bar, inhale through flamed nostrils and take in the dance floor. I get locked in to a particular couple doing that Salsa shit and take notice of how two become one in movement and take note that I need to learn that shit. Never forgetting why I leaned this way in the first place, I allow my glance to briskly pan right and I lock sleazy eyes with a banging-ass broad. I blink and turn back towards my homie Jabari just to act way cooler than I actually am. From what I saw, the broad was Persian—this I was guessing. She was fine as fuck—this I knew. Never thinking that I’m all that or guessing that any woman would think that I was, I played it low-keyed and sipped my drink. Some little sexy thing came over to Jabari and got to showing him how to properly Salsa dance. I look to my right and realize that the Mediterranean jumpoff is right next to your dude looking drunk-as-fuck. “Ay.” She looked up at me with diluted poise and smiled, stumbled and said, “Hey baby.” Definitely upped my ante. “What brings you out to this wonderful place tonight?” She moves her wavy, jet-black hair out of her face and with that same hand points at the girl Jabari is making a valiant attempt at doing something that somewhat resembles Salsa dancing with, and then moves her index finger to another exotic, pretty-ass broad and says, “I came out with my girls. Girls night out.” “True indeed,” as I look into this tall, pretty girl’s eyes without having to do my neck akimbo. She had that crooked Middle Eastern bridge of the nose, but for me, imperfections are attractive. Her hair was luxurious and her skin was flawless with the hue of gold bullion. She had the cleavage out. I love cleavage. I often wonder if women knew the degree to which I aesthetically peruse their entire being, not just their tits and ass, would they be flattered or self-conscious? I looked at her hands and asked her if she wanted a drink. She stared me down and kissed me real quick on the lips. I looked at the bartender, who was smiling and said, “Can I get another Sapphire tonic and, what you want girl? Rum and Diet. Thank you.” She comes back with the libations, winks at me and says in my ear, “This round’s on me. I don’t like that bitch.”

“So, what’s your name?” I ask this girl realizing I never got it. “Sara. What’s yours?”, she says lifting a glass she actually needed not to have lifted to her pretty mouth. “Chad.” She looks puzzled, so I say, “Chad. Like Central Africa,” like I always do. “Oh. You don’t look like a Chad.” “Thanks.” I was really shocked at how good this girl looked and how long she was hanging around me. I noticed that she was a fast drinker and was damn near done with the drink we just got. I threw mine back as she was getting two more from the bartender. Jabari, done with Salsa lessons, asks me how’s it going with that Egyptian broad. I tell him surprisingly well, and I ain’t even doing anything more than licking my lips like LL. I also told him that I thought she was Persian, but she’s definitely somewhere from the Fertile Crescent and that I’ll get to the bottom of it and then do my damnedest to get to the bottom of her Fertile Crescent. I look back over at the bar and Sara is arguing with the bartender over something or another. I grab my drink from in between their war zone and lean back on the bar. After one of them gave in, which one I’m not sure, Sara comes over to me and says, “I don’t like that bitch.” I smile and stay neutral; I’d fuck either or. “Take my number,” Sara tells me from right field. “Alright…” I say as she dictates the digits and I type said dictation into the iPhone. “Ooh. You’ve got an iPhone? Call me.” “I’m calling you right now, girl.” She pulls a Blackberry out of her purse and declines the call and saves my name alongside my number and downs her drink. She then grabs me and we start to do Salsa as good as a big muthafucker untrained in the art and a drunken bitch can. It was nothing more than her excuse to get close to a quadroon. I broke one of my rules to never be the guy making out in the club, but my mere existence itself has been nothing short of civil disobedience, so I suppose I was just being real with myself. After a bit of this, I back off because I hate to be teased. Sara comes over and watches me as I drink and pretend not to be interested in her. “What are you doing tomorrow?” She says and grabs my hand. “Chilling with you,” I say like I’m supposed to. She smiles and says, “Tomorrow.” She then puts my hand right in her nice-ass cleavage and kisses me again. Then I remembered something, so I had to ask, “Sara. What’s your ethnicity?” She pushes her hair out of her face again managing to look both drunk and pretty and says, “Egyptian. My dad is from Morocco though.” I’d have to tell Jabari he was right. Damn. No wonder she was so banging. Good breeding. Mutts are the best. Her friends were ready to leave so they came and got her and said it’s time to jet. She kisses me yet again and as she stumbles away, I was looking her in her pretty-ass eyes as she mouths the word, “Too-Mahr-Row,” in three distinct-as-fuck syllables. Tomorrow indeed. I get my tab from the pretty-ass bartender, Jessica, and me and her and Jabari chat as we get one last drink. Jessica tells me to watch that bitch. She’s got something wrong with her. I wondered if I should take Jessica as a good judge of character or a hater. I took it neither way and remembered something, so I asked her, “Jessica. What’s your ethnicity?” As she’s putting chaser in someone’s drink she tells me, “Black and Italian. People always think I’m Asian though.” Even more good breeding. If only I could construct a bitch like Dr. Frankenstein. We leave the superclub Ibiza and I can tell Jabari has had it and there is no way he can drive home. On the way home I stop at 7-11 and while there I get a text from Sara that reads “Tomorrow.” As I grab some Flaming Hot Cheetoes, I get another text. Again from Sara. This time it says, “(Today)”. I smile and admire her temporal awareness.

Later that day I woke up too early at about 9:36am. I remembered Jabari was sleeping on the chair in my living room. I felt good with no sign of a hangover. I immediately hopped in the shower to wash off the stank and sin of the previous evening. Jabari and I parted our separate ways and I went off and ran a few errands and read some literature in a bar over near Capitol Hill. At around 4:16pm I decided to give Sara a call. Standing outside on Pennsylvania Avenue while drinking a hot cup of joe, I let the phone ring. After three rings she picks up sounding refreshed, “Hello?” “Hey girl, It’s Chad.” “Hey! What are you doing?” “Just studying. You?” “I’m doing laundry. Studying? Are you in school?” “Nah. Not anymore.” “Why are you studying then?” “I got to be on point girl.” “OK… well, what do you want to do?” “Shit… I’m getting slightly hungry girl. You wanna get some food in a bit?” “Yeah, where do you want to go? Is Adams Morgan cool?” “That’s fine with me. Where?” “Let’s go to the Diner. Cool?” “Cool. About 7-ish?” “Yes. Yay! Can’t wait to see you!” “Word. See you in a few.” “Bye.” I sipped my joe and looked over at the Capital building and felt an American gust of freedom.

After taking about forty minutes to find parking I walked westbound on Columbia towards 18th street NW wondering why I don’t just pay for parking; time is worth more than money. I was about a half-hour early, a novel habit I had picked up over the years. This way I could get my mind right before she got around me. To waste time I ducked into CD/Game Exchange with the expectation that they wouldn’t have anything good because they never do. They’re only good for taking your media and giving you fuck-all of its worth without having the decency of using lubrication. Fuck them. They didn’t have shit good. Anything that was good, I already owned. After that I ducked into Idle Time Books and read an article posted on the wall from March 1, 1971 regarding whether or not Bobby Seale—who was, at the time, the Chairman of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense—could wear a goatee during the New Haven Black Panther trials. How far we’ve come, for race is no longer an issue in this bastion of freedom and/or equality. While reading I got a call from Sara, who said she was running late. I offered to come and get her. Gentleman. She said she was all the way in Tenleytown and that it would be a waste of gas and of prime parking. I appreciated her predilection towards logic and decided not to offer again. I kept reading various books and eventually got a text from her saying, “I’m here.” I leave Idle Time Books, walk past the bossa nova billowing like reefer smoke out of Bossa, which was improperly juxtaposed next to the blues emanating from Madam’s Organ. I looked inside of Tryst at all of the smart and beautiful people that were—for whatever reason—studying and drinking coffee and chai tea on this lovely Saturday night. I passed an empty Pizza Boli’s; it was far too early for anyone to be drunk enough to want to consume a jumbo slice. Through the window of The Diner I could see into the waiting area where Sara was patiently waiting in the vestibule. I opened the door and she parted the black curtain that kept the winter chill to a minimum for the paying patrons. She looked even better sober and done-up and that cleavage was back for an encore, so I smiled and we gave each other a hug that was surprisingly sensual for two people that have only interacted for about an hour in total. The hipster that was playing the host led us to the rear of the restaurant and gave us one of those skinny two-people tables. I always sit on the outside of such arrangements since I get claustrophobic and end up breaking out in an uncontrollable, profuse sweat. I figured this would be a bad time for that, so I waved Sara towards the inside seat. Finally seated we exchanged some of those forgettable, mandatory opposite sex interview questions. From my questions I gathered that she was a 21-year old student at American University, originally from the Virginia Beach area. In high school she was an overachieving athlete—basketball and track—with a 4.0, and she even belonged to the Glee Club. She, like all other women, was a psychology major and worked part-time up at some center with bad-ass teenagers in it. She just got out of a pretty long relationship. How long? About two and a half years. As a matter of a fact, her ex was the manager at Nolan’s, an Irish pub right down the street that was about as Irish as Chipotle is Mexican. This was why she was out at the club, on a Holy Grail quest to get acclimated to being single again. Her girls thought there was no reason for her to be moping around; get out and strut your stuff and she’d definitely find a nice, young man to talk to. I guess I was playing that guy. The hipster that was playing the waiter comes over with two clear, plastic glasses full of fresh DC tap and puts them on the table and says, “Hey folks. I’m gonna be your waiter. Can I start you off with some drinks?” Sara, wasting no studio time, says “I’ll take a rum & diet.” I look at the waiter and say, “Sapphire and tonic, please.” “Alright, I’m just gonna need to see some IDs from you guys.” She’s faster on the draw than me so he looks at her ID… gives it back to her… “Thanks.” Grabs mine… looks at it… looks at me… looks at it again… looks back at me and says, “Holy shit, man. How do you do it?” I then give him a look like, “You asshole. This 21-year old, hot-to-trot harlot doesn’t know my age yet, and I didn’t really plan on revealing it in this fucking fashion.” He catches on to what I’m trying to say without me having to say it, and he says, “Oh. My bad. Let me get those drinks.” Sara looks a little more interested than confused and as I’m putting my ID back in my wallet, she asks to see it. You see, I look young and pretty. No one thinks I’m 32, which is mostly a good thing, as it usually results in younger women being attracted to me. Sometimes they trip off of the age differential; sometimes they think it’s hot. Sara says, “Is this a fake?” I say, “Why would I get a fake that says I’m 32? There’s no societal advantage to being thirty-plus.” She was twirling my ID around in her fingers like border patrol and says, “So you’re 32?” I nod in agreement. She bites her bottom lip and is like, “That’s hot.” The hipster waiter chimes in, “Here you guys go.” He puts each respective drink next to us respectively and we hold them up and have a toast to meeting one another. Clink.

Sara ran her interview on me and found out a select few details about my life; the ones that inspire awe and intrigue only, of course. She was impressed by all of the spots around the globe the intercontinental champ had been and mostly with the fact that I graduated from Georgetown. If the card will win the book, play it. We were on our third drink in what would have been for most people second drink’s time. Legs started to touch. We began to compare hands. She noticed that I had nicer hands than her. She was right. She asked to use my lip balm and began looking at me for too long. She revealed her insecurity with her big feet not knowing I’m into chiropody. That made me think of my boy Kip who once told me that if a girl has big feet and hands, then that directly correlates to the depth of the coochie. If Kip said it, then it’s probably scientially sound. The topics became more philosophical and seemed to deal with the matters of the future. I told her that I was moving soon. “Where to?” she asks, looking better each time I look at her. “First I’m moving to Cleveland…” “Oh,” she interjects, “…why would you move there?” I furl my brow and tell her, “Calm down, girl. That’s where I’m from.” She looks legitimately embarrassed that she took it there and apologizes. I pay it no mind as I am used to defending my hometown, but I did wonder for about two seconds how someone from Virginia Beach had the audacity to naysay against a city with three major league teams, a river of hellfire and a history of race riots. “I’m going there to chill with the family and to write a book.” “Oh. That’s cool.” “After that, I want to move to LA.” “Wow. LA. What are you gonna do there?” I smile and say, “Shit girl, it’s only one thing to do. Become a star. Or not.” She smiles and reaches into her purse and checks a text message. “Hey Chad. Would you mind if my homegirl comes and chills with us? I’m not trying to cramp your style, but I rarely see her. She stays out in Fairfax and is in the vicinity now. She’s from South Africa and is so cute and funny. You’ll love her.” I often think that this comes from a need for women to present possible suitors to trusted friends so they can go to the bathroom and talk about a dude and pretend that they are on Sex and the City. I said, ‘Sure. Cool with me.” The way I figured it, I’m usually witty enough that the friends won’t hate me even if they don’t understand why their friend finds me attractive. And, who knows? Maybe the South African girl will be a possible out if me and this Egyptian jumpoff don’t jumpoff. Whatever. I was feeling myself that evening. You could have brought Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter and I still would have been shining bright like that light reflecting from so many diamonds. I chuck the deuce to the hipster waiter and he rather swiftly gets us two more drinks and then takes our food orders.

Just as Sara and I finish eating her South African girl enters The Diner. They hug each other and the lady sits down and we introduce ourselves, but for whatever reason, I don’t retain her name. She was indeed cute. She looked like Aaliyah, but whereas Aaliyah was sexy, this girl was very cute. She had those clear braces, which didn’t help her to look anything else but cute. People that weren’t intercontinental champs like me may have mistaken her accent as British or Australian. Her eyes were big and expressive as if she hadn’t done drugs before, or if she had, then she was just one of the lucky ones that don’t get that yellowed sclera like most do. I think she had my affliction, looking young and pretty and being far older than her cute visage would imply. She sat down and began to get loquacious as fuck, but in an endearing way. Evidently she had just gotten her appetite back as she had recently undergone some operation on her cervix, for which she apologized to me for mentioning. It was her first time out of the house in some time and her husband had been driving her insane. Yeah, she said, she had a husband, but it wasn’t as simple as it sounded. She came here directly from South Africa and was having a difficult time renewing her work visa. A white dude she had met and had been on a few dates with offered to marry her so that she wouldn’t be deported. She initially didn’t want to do it, for she felt that it was not honorable to marry a man for money or power, much less citizenship. However, after considering her options she went ahead with the marriage. In an attempt to truly love her new husband, they began to have sex, but according to her, he was absolutely awful in between the sheets. I wondered exactly how bad someone could be in between those sheets, and she tells me, “Believe me. There is no hope.” Alright. I believe you. She ordered a grilled cheese with fries and the same thing Sara was drinking. I felt myself fall in love with her for about three minutes and then I realized that I just met her ten minutes ago and that I only met Sara 18 hours ago, so I should calm my sucker-for-love-ass down. We sat and watched the South African girl eat and drank even more drinks and laughed an awful lot; far more than I usually do when surrounded by women. Not to be sexist, but most women just aren’t that funny. This South African girl was hilarious and Sara was a quick-witted lush, so I thought life to be headed in an upwardly mobile direction. I asked the hipster playing our waiter for the check and thought of fucking them both tonight. Overzealous? Possibly, but shouldn’t one aim high? The check came and Sara offered to pay for it, but I insisted on handling it since I ain’t too much of a fan of women paying for shit for me. They may think I owe them something by the night’s end or some shit like that.

We left the Diner to enter the hullabaloo that is Adams Morgan on a Saturday night. It was about 10:30pm; things were moving towards full-on party mode. There were even a couple of people eating jumbo slices already. We walked down the block past the predatory Africans and Latinos that insisted on gaming Sara and the South African girl even though each of them were on my arms. We walked past the fu-fu European places that I never go into and the fu-fu people who were taking smoke breaks outside of said places. As we weaved around drunken people, trees and cars whose rears were parked too far onto the sidewalk, I had an hankering to go into the Toledo Lounge since the owners are from Ohio, but mainly because it’s really ratty-looking and I hate nice bars. Once inside, the ladies grab barstools and I insist on standing. I tell Sara it’s because I’m fidgety, but really it was so I could have the best possible vantage point of her ridiculous cleavage. She orders up everyone more drinks and we get to talking and laughing even more. I felt at home if nothing else, and was beginning to feel Sara’s hand on mine often. I took the opportunity to put my nails to the back of her neck and play in her hair. The South African girl was smiling at us and said we should get a room. Sara smiled and says, “Maybe later.” She orders another round and excuses herself to the bathroom. Me and the South African girl get to talking and she says that I’m in good with her girl; don’t even worry. I believed her since her statement supported much of my evidence. Sara comes back and touches my leg as she sits down. She asks if I can play pool. I say I’m alright and she suggests that we all head to the pool hall down the street, Kokopooli’s. We down our drinks and I ask for the tab and Sara tells me to chill out because she’s got it. I chill out as instructed and wait out front for the ladies. They come out shortly thereafter and we head south towards the pool hall. Sara is walking at increased drunken speed right in front of the South African girl and me. As we were walking past one of the most obnoxious parts of 18th street, the area with the Spaghetti Warehouse, Tom Tom and all of that other shit that should be moved via tractor beam to any state school’s fraternity row, I noticed a dude creep behind me. I kept an eye on him as it was obvious that he was making an attempt to be clandestine with whatever he was trying to do. He was about 5’7” or so and had on some black shoes, cheap grey pants that were most likely Dockers, and a black leather jacket that was either weathered or just old and beat up. From the quick glance I got of his face he resembled a thinner Tone-Loc. Anyhow, this guy creeped around me on the right and then, with far more force than was necessary, yokes up Sara from behind into a hug/Heimlich maneuver of sorts and kisses her on the back of her head without a hint of love, lust or passion. I was a little thrown off by all of this random action, so I look over at the South African girl who looks like she’s about to cry. Through my peripheral vision I see the sign for Nolan’s and put two and two together and look back at the South African girl, who between tears and gasps for air and a face full of terror says rather ominously, “Oh no… it’s her ex-boyfriend.” Well, I’ll be. Sometimes even Batman can be wrong. Never in a million years would I have thought that the ex-boyfriend who was the manager of one of the most rowdy, white boy, college bars on the street would have been Tone-Loc. The South African girl grabs my arm tighter and says, “Let’s just go into the pool hall. Let her talk to him.” As we passed them en route to Kokopooli’s me and Tone-Loc locked eyes and dude looked even more pissed since I looked way better than him. He then turned back to Sara, whose head was hung in an attempt to avoid the whole populace of Adams Morgan for fear of embarrassment. I quit looking behind me and descended the stairs into Kokopooli’s lead by the twitching hand of a South African girl.

The dim lighting in Kokopooli complimented the dark mood perfectly. I leaned against the bar while the South African girl sniffed snot back into her nose and cut off the waterworks. I handed her a bar napkin to wipe off the tracks of tears. “He’s horrible,” she told me looking into the distance, of which there was none. “I first met him with my husband. We used to drink at his bar and he seemed a little crazy, but OK. Then we met Sara. I always used to wonder how in the hell she decided to be with him. She’s so intelligent and has so much ahead of her in life. He’s just a bar manager.” I ordered another Sapphire and tonic and asked the South African if she wanted anything. “God, yes. This is the first time in years I feel like I need a drink.” I agreed and got a round. After handing her the rum and diet, she continued telling the story. “I don’t really know much about their relationship because I never really wanted to know. They broke up about a month or so ago. I don’t know why… all I know… is the next time I saw her after that… she’s got a black eye… and she said it wasn’t the first time!” She starts crying again, so I grab her and hold her close. People in the bar start looking at me like I’m the one making this pretty young lady cry. I return the gaze and they turn away. “Girl, don’t let this asshole make you cry. Let’s try to just chill, breathe slow and enjoy the rest of the evening.” She agrees reluctantly and while I’m holding her I notice Sara come in Kokopooli’s. Sara walks over to us at the bar and walks right up to the South African girl and they give each other a long hug and both begin crying. I have watched enough episodes of Sex and the City to know the best thing to do at the moment was to remain quiet. After a few minutes of tears, they wipe away the remains and Sara apologizes to me for the idiocy of her ex-boyfriend and urges us all to let her get another round and forget that it even happened. A habit of mine—I really haven’t discovered if it is a good or a bad habit as of yet—is to forgive and never forget. It may be possible for me to forgive a dude that stole from my house, but I’ll be goddamned if I let that same muthafucka back into my house. That’s just hella counterintuitive. So we get back to drinking and after a few minutes it seems as if the collective mood is back on track. The two ladies even began to smile again. Then Tone-Loc came in the pool hall.

He was engaged in a conversation with the bouncer of the pool hall. I was correct from the giddy-up; dude did look like Tone-Loc. I turn my head to the ladies and the South African girl is crying again and Sara has her head on the bar fortified by her arms and purse. I look back towards Tone-Loc who is now walking at the speed of George Jefferson towards his ex-girlfriend. He yokes her up a bit more gently than he did the first time and the South African girl jumps as if he yoked her instead. I lean around to the bartender and tell him to “Give me a Corona quick,” and I slap him a ten-spot. The long neck makes it the best bottle to use as a weapon. I turn back around and the scene is pretty much the same. Tone-Loc’s got Sara’s right side rapaciously groped up next to him. He says some shit in her ear, looks at me with the eyes of a shermhead and then turns his head around to Sara’s ear again. The South African girl gets closer to me and I tell her, “For real. Stop crying.” She takes a deep breath and leans back on the bar like I was doing and she reminded me of when you tell a toddler to quit crying, lest I give you something to cry about, complete with the sniffing and the delusional straight face. I was paying close attention to Tone-Loc when he finally turned around and sized me up. There was a pillar that divided us near the bar. He walks around the pillar at the speed of Barry Allen and steps about a foot from me and says, “So, uh, homie. You on a date or somethin’ with Sara?” This is when time paused and I had a split second—which seemed like an eternity—to think this situation over. I first wondered where the dude was from. He sounded like he should have been from Oakland, but his manner of dress made his origin indiscernible. He had the opposite of my affliction, as he looked old and crusty. I thought the dude to be no more than 26, but he looked like he was that 37 year old uncle that had never been married. That beard he kept wasn’t helping either. Poor guy. No wonder he has to strong-arm bitches. The one thing was, he didn’t seem to be was a threat at all. He played tough with the ladies, but when I rolled off the bar, stood up and sucked my gut in and said, “Nah, dog. I don’t go on dates,” he did nothing but look me up and down twice, flick his nose with his thumb and speed-walk back over to his ex. I’m not a tough guy, but neither was this dude. Real gangsters ain’t gonna be doing no sucker-for-love-ass spectacle like that in public. Any man with two bits of wits knows that women make the choice. They’re always in control. A woman chooses who she wants to be with. When you get into rapacious methods to force a bitch into a changing her mind… man, that’s some old bitch-made shit.

This dude was in Sara’s ear with what seemed to be intense psychological warfare. I never took my eyes off the dude. At one point he takes enough time to stop tormenting the girl to tell me really fast, “Homie. I hope you ain’t buying no drinks. You know this daddy’s little girl right here. Yeah. This my little moneymaker right here.” Then he goes back to speaking to her through the back of her head. I actually laughed to myself in disgust from the complete lack of humanity it took for this dude to tell me that shit in her presence. I thought of busting the Corona bottle over Tone-Loc’s ugly fucking face and taking three steps over and grabbing a cue stick and beating the fucking shit out of his head with it and then stomping the muthafucka’s chest and kicking him in the stomach eight fucking times and walking over and grabbing a cue ball from the pool table with the two girls looking terrified and then walking over slowly as he lay on his back moaning with the South African girl crying and Sara screaming “Stop, stop!” and me looking her in the eye and saying “Shut the fuck up,” and taking the cue ball and bashing that shit up against the side of that muthafucka’s skull and then knocking his teeth out his muthafucking, bitch-made mouth with it and spitting on the fucking loser. But for what? Over a broad I met last night? Hell no. Fuck that. I am not saving no hoes. She can deal with this shit, or else I planned on boning the fuck out after I finished my beer. Tone-Loc was over there talking to her again and he grabbed her arm and dragged her outside like my mom used to do me out of Kiddie City. The South African girl was looking at the door and says, “That mother. Fucker.” I says, “Fuck him.” “He’s crazy,” she tries to convince me. “No really, he is crazy. I am scared what he will do to her.” I kept quiet, not really having anything pithy to say. I started to wonder if I was caught up in the middle of some sick-ass, abusive relationship in which Sara got off on being beaten and Tone-Loc got off on beating her. I couldn’t see her as exactly innocent in all of this; it seemed that if she really wanted to end this she could have. I was expecting very little at that point and made the decision to leave just as Sara came back downstairs by herself. She wiped her face and said, “I’m sorry you two. I’m really sorry. He won’t be back. Can we just… just get a round and a table and forget all about it?” I didn’t audibly agree with her, but I went along with the plan as she got the balls and a rack from the bartender. I carried the drinks she ordered up over to the middle table. As she racked the table I leaned against the wall and looked around this dark, dank pool hall and wondered which movie I was in. Then I got a little pissed. My life is usually a comedy. At times it may be a thriller or a bit of a drama. On occasion it’s an action flick. Often it’s porn. But it’s never no psychological-fucking-horror with no psycho-crazed, abusive ex-boyfriend in it. I was starting to get a little peeved at these muthafucka’s for putting me in it.

The South African girl, seemingly in better spirits after imbibing some spirits, said she didn’t want to play pool because she’d tire of it after the break. Sara, who had had two more drinks with me since her ex’s departure, was also quite festive and jovial. It was a sudden turn of events. The best possible peripetia I could have asked my favorite superhero—White Jesus—for. What I thought was about to be the dénouement, luckily, wasn’t. Sara had me break. KKCRACCKK!!! I ended up getting both a stripe and a solid in, so I went for a 5 ball right by the corner pocket. This lined me up for a 3 ball on the other side of the table. Sunk that. Sara says, “You’re good.” As I’m lining up to nail the 4 ball back on the other side of the table, Sara bends over with her big-ass titties hanging right over the corner pocket. It’s like a cleavage lover’s pizza. I hit the cue ball and, of course, botch the shot. I look over and smile at her and she smiles back and at that moment I remember how good she looked in the club and life gets to looking good again. Sara claims she can’t shoot right, so being the gentleman I am, I show her the proper position for one’s arms, chest, legs and hips whilst aiming. She’s a wonderful student; eager to learn. She, of course, misses the shot. For my attempt at the 7 ball, she puts her nice ass right over the corner pocket. This time I nail it. She laughs and I walk over to get my drink from the drink ledge and to talk to the ladies. Sara immediately grabs me as soon as come over. The South African girl says that we should go get a room for the second time. We laugh. Sara leans in and kisses me. She was a sensuous kisser with a tongue that moved like an American flag flapping fucking freedom freely in the wind. I grab her ass hard with porno-like authority and she’s with it. We say “fuck pool” and start laughing and enjoying the night again. All was going well… until Tone-Loc came back in.

The South African girl, on cue, starts crying. Sara looks like a deer in headlights. The bouncer, who I assumed he had to have known as he is the manager of a bar six doors up the block, was keeping him from entering. I couldn’t hear what he was saying to him, but it had to be something along the lines of, “Yo man. Every time you come in here, bitches start crying. Calamity ensues. Dude, I can’t let you back in.” I imagined that Tone-Loc would have replied to the tune of, “C’mon homie. You know how these hoes be doing. That bitch got my money. Just let me say one thing to her and then I’m out. I put that on my mama.” The bouncer must have bought it, as once again this ugly fuck ends up in my midst. He yokes up his ex again while he wonders why she left him. He yanks her by the arm to the other side of the pool table, says whatever he says to her, she breaks out in tears, runs over to the South African girl, who is still by me, grabs her, and the two ladies head into the bathroom. I look from my side of the pool table to Tone-Loc’s side and he’s staring me down, so I stay leaned on the wall sipping my drink waiting for his commentary. “She ain’t even gonna fuck with no nigga like you. Look at your gear.” Not many things offend me, but on the days that I have made an effort to look halfway decent I’ll be goddamned if someone is gonna speak on my Polo’d down, sunrise-to-sunset, fine-ass self. I push myself off the wall with my back into an upright position, take a sip from my drink and say, “My gear? I’m Polo’d down, Wild Thing. You rocking Dockers, Tone-Loc!” He looked offended from the Tone-Loc reference moreso than the Dockers comment. I guess if I wore Dockers I wouldn’t think it to be an insult either. He tells me, “You corny suburb nigga…” Then just as I was about to retort… I stopped. I thought. I then realized that I sounded like a fifth grader talking about this guy’s clothing and that I was lowering my standards of couth on account of this fucking imbecile. I realized that I had no reason to fight this dude, much less even talk to him, so I says, “Listen, dude. I don’t even fucking know you. Your ex and you can handle y’all’s psycho shit however you’d like. The fact is, she’s out with me. She chooses where she’s going. If she wants to go with you, so be it. Otherwise, be a man and except the decision she makes. And don’t say shit else to me. You wanna bring it to me? I’m right here.” Then I leaned back against the wall and sipped on Sapphire. Tone-Loc stared at me with the hatred that was formerly reserved for Judas. About ten seconds later, the girls came out. The South African girl comes over and hugs me and then grabs her drink. She was obviously doing her best not to cry. Sara walked over to Tone-Loc and they had their final words. He flicks his nose with his thumb again and walks over to me real fast and says even faster, “Homie. You better get a room. Cause if you go to her crib… I’m there. Guaranteed. Guaranteed.” Then he stepped off and speed walked up out of Kokopooli’s. I stood in total disbelief. Like the altercations before, the girls would both dry their eyes like René & Angela, get another drink and ten minutes later they were acting as if nothing had happened. Not that I minded making out with Sara’s fine-ass, but damn…

As the girls were turning in the pool balls and rack, the bouncer came up to me. “What up fam?” he says as he gave me dap. “Chilling man, what’s up?” “Listen fam, it looks like you just trying to do your thing… I don’t really know that nigga like that, but this ain’t the first time he been tripping over that broad all up and down the block. That nigga pussy-whipped like whoa, fam. If I was you, I’d just leave out the back. You don’t never know what no pussy-whipped muthafucka is capable of.” Even though there are po-lice up and down the block nowadays on 18th Street, I did indeed heed the words of the brother and told the ladies that we’re going out the back. I grab the two of them and go through the kitchen doors and say, “Hola amigo” to the Salvadoreños and exit through the back door. I felt like I was taking the bitch way out, but maybe dude was right. As I was walking, I finally realized how drunk I was. I looked at the ladies and from their sloppy struts, I wondered if the sidewalk was made from cobblestones. We walked about six blocks to this 2006 Jeep Liberty rental car I had at the time. We pile in with Sara riding shotgun and the South African girl in the rear-middle seat. I start driving around the area aimlessly as we crack jokes and watch the let out at the various bars on Columbia. “So ladies, where we gonna go? My house?” Sara asks, “What’s at your house?” “A hot tub,” I say, then smile. The South African girl claps twice and says, “Ooh! I love hot tubs!” Sara turns around and looks at her and says, “But I don’t have a bathing suit.” By way of the rear view mirror I could see the South African girl raise one eyebrow and she says to Sara, “We’ll just go in the buff!” Oh God. This is perfect. I always say that if you can visualize something, set your sights on a precise goal, with enough perseverance, anything can come to fruition. Anything.

I feel the need to reiterate my drunkenness at this point. I wasn’t too drunk to drive, but I would have certainly failed a Breathalyzer test. Maybe that mere fact does make one too drunk to drive. Anyhow, on the way up Connecticut I spot a po-lice car behind me. To try and duck him I turned westbound through the neighborhood of Cleveland Park. The po-lice keeps tailing me. “Fuck,” I think without realizing I’m thinking out loud, “I’ve got herb on me.” Sara puts her hand out and is like, “Give it to me.” Word up. Mami’s a rider, and I’m a roller. She takes my two grams of kind bud and does whatever she does with it. The South African girl puts her fingers in my mouth, and whereas I wouldn’t have had a problem with that—had she washed her hands first—I didn’t think this was the time for kinky shit. After she removed her fingers there were two pennies in my mouth. “Suck on the pennies! The copper will kill the smell of alcohol.” I sucked on the pennies and tried very hard not to think that in my mouth I have the nastiest, most frequently found-on-the-ground coin in America. Fuck it. Between all these preparations for the police to pull me over, I had begun to think that maybe I wouldn’t get pulled over after all. The red and blue lights served as the light bulb for that bright-ass idea. I gingerly pull over and sober-up like only getting pulled over by the po-lice can do a person. My ID was out and ready, as was the rental agreement. As I rolled down my window, the park po-liceman, actual federal po-lice with all the powers and privileges granted to feds, walked up to my window with an illuminated Mag-lite as light shifted between all of our heads. At the last possible second I remember to spit out the pennies. “Good morning sir.” “Good morning officer.” “Seems as if you sort of ran that last stop sign back there sir.” The po-lice shines the light in the car, first in my face, to which I immediately close my eyes, then he moves it to Sara in the front seat and the South African girl in the back seat. “No sir, officer. I do not believe that I did. If so, I assure you that it was an accident.” “Have you had anything to drink sir?” “No officer. I’m Muslim.” The officer looks at me flummoxed, clicks a button and off goes his Mag-lite. “Excuse me?” “I am Muslim. It is haram for me to drink.” The po-lice asks, “Where were you on your way to?” Sara then chimes in at a surprisingly appropriate time, saying, “We were on the way to my apartment. It’s right on Massachusetts.” Massachusetts? I hadn’t even realized that I had driven so far out of the way of my house. The officer gives us a look in our pupils and says, “Alright. Just slow it down and be careful out here. The roads are slick.” “Yes sir, officer. Have a wonderful evening.” I wait for him to get in his car. He hits reverse and does a u-turn and I feel relief combined with an adrenaline rush at the same time my inebriation comes back. I got a god-awful head rush. I put the car into drive and pull off.

It was about 4:30am and I figured that since we were closer to Sara’s house I’d rather just get off the road for a minute, so I head towards Massachusetts Avenue NW. The girls were talking about how close a call that was and how much a fool I am for saying I was Muslim. Whatever. They see whatever they want to see and I know that, so when I can, I use that to my advantage. I look over at Sara who is still looking good as fuck and I grab her thigh and she puts her hand on top of mine. I remembered something so I ask her, “Hey. Where’d you put that reefer?” Embarrassed, she shrugs her shoulders and squeaks out, “In my… you know…” Yeah. I know now. You see, I was curious as to whether she just put it in her panties considering that she wasn’t going to get searched and that it was an insignificant amount of herb, or if she took it to the Nth level and jammed that jont all up in her puzzy. Like previously said, mami’s a rider. “Let me see it,” I realized a few hours too late that this girl enjoys being told what to do. She commenced to reaching down beyond the waistline of her jeans. She squirms and shifts for a bit and like a rabbit out of a hat, she yanks a couple of grams out her coochie. I put my hand out like the call is for me and she puts the bag in my hand like a good girl. I flick my wrist to the left and the bag slaps me right under my nose and my nostrils flare and then constrict. The pussy smelt good. I liken it to the redolence of Jell-O. Hear me out. Take for instance, cherry flavored Jell-O. While it does taste like cherry, one never enters the house and is like, “Mmm, mmmm! Is that cherry Jell-O I smell?” Why? Because Jell-O, like pussy, shouldn’t smell up the room. But if one gets close enough to a fresh cherry Jell-O mold and cups one’s hand, using said hand to waft a feint breeze from the Jell-O mold towards one’s nose like a chemical in a test tube, they will indeed catch a slight whiff of a chemical cherry redolence. The plastic bag had a very conservative aroma of pussy. Not that Massengill vinegar/chemical, too-clean-to-be-true smell, nor was it that rancid gust of wind that makes you frown violently when you’re banging that thang out doggystyle. Just good, clean, natural pussy. Sara looked at me like smelling that bag was hyper sexy, and I knew right then and there that those panties just hit the dew point. I popped the bag in my mouth and sucked the muthafucka like the last bit of meat on a buffalo wing. Sara sits up, back erect in her seat, grabs my leg and says, “Let’s get home,” with a look of lust in her eyes. “That’s my building there, turn in up there to the right.”

After parking in the rear of her building we shake and wake up the South African girl. I grab an unopened fifth of Crown Royal I had stashed under the driver’s seat as I figured we would probably drink some. We all stumbled to the main entrance, each of them on either of my arms. Using a credit card she gets in and we walk past an older Ethiopian gentleman working the door. He smiles and gives me a “thumbs up.” I smile back and hope he’s a soothsayer. We catch the elevator up to her floor and exit it looking like we’ve been drinking for six hours straight. The first thing I noticed was that the walls were pink and the hallways were extraordinarily wide; like 16 feet across. “Yo. Why are these halls so wide?” Sara, walking sloppily, felt the need to turn around and walk backwards while looking at me to answer. “This place used to be an mental hospital.” The South African girl says, “You live in an insane asylum? I wouldn’t live here.” I silently agree. We get to the middle of the hall and turn left down a normal-sized hallway. Her door was obviously the first one on the right, the one she was ungracefully waltzing towards while pulling her keys out of her purse. As we walked to her door I noticed that it was directly opposite the stairwell door. I knew this because it had that small window in its frame. Sara is fidgeting with the lock for about twenty seconds, and the second she gets the door open, the stairwell door opens violently and out walks Tone-Loc. “I told you homie. I told you.” She tries to go in her house but he grabs her and walks her around the corner from where we just came. I look over to the South African girl, who is crying once again. Then I hear a thud, as if someone just got their body thrown against an asylum wall. The South African girl grabs my hand and says, “Come on. You have to leave. You are too good of a person to have to deal with this. That’s her choice.” She leads me back down the hall towards the elevator. At first I didn’t look behind me, but then, like Orpheus, I had to. Sara was on the ground in a fetal position while Tone-Loc stood over her inflicting more Guantanamo Bay-esque physical and psychological torture. The elevator door opened and I did my best to erase the image. As me and the South African girl descended, she held on to me and cried horrendously. We walked past the Ethiopian gentleman and he throws up his arms like, “What happened?” I shoot back a look like, “I have no idea.” She walked me out to my rental car and took both of my hands and stared at me for a few seconds. She then let my left hand go and grabs my face and brings it down to her mouth and we start kissing passionately as fuck. I bring her next to me and start holding her tighter than I should have. I got lost in her mouth for minutes. I could taste the salt of her tears, as she didn’t stop crying the whole time we were kissing. I grabbed her by her thin waist and she leaned back and wiped the tears from her face. She looked at me as if she had done me emotional harm, said “Goodbye,” turned around and walked slowly back to the apartment building. I stood there for what had to have been three minutes. A voice that wasn’t mine told me that it was time to go home.

It was about 5:21am. I was back at my house sitting in my boxers watching the Travel Channel, rolling a joint and slowly sipping on that Crown Royal. A feeling of sympathy began to engulf my consciousness. I thought of Sara, and although I wanted nothing to do with her ever again in life, I felt compelled to know that she was at least breathing. Part of it stemmed from my curiosity and this desire for closure. I grabbed my iPhone and called up Sara with intentions of only checking on her safety. One ring, two ring, call connects, and instead of the sweet female voice I expected, I got Tone Loc. “Damn homie. You hard pressed for pussy tonight.” I cackled out loud from double entendre. Firstly, I was pissed because he actually got me pretty good, I hadn’t heard the term “hard-pressed” in years and his mercurial tongue delivered it perfectly. This guy deserved to be in films. Secondly, I couldn’t believe he had the nerve to bill me as the one hard-pressed for pussy, as he was the guy who was just standing in a stairwell for an hour, waiting for the broad who dumped him to get home so that he could abuse her. I told him this much, and he says, “Yeah, well. I’m over here and you’re there.” Then he hangs up. Son of a bitch. Hell no. I call back. Dude picks up and hangs right back up. I call back. Same thing. Repeat process twelve times and finally say, “Fuck it.” As I’m sipping Canadian whiskey I hear “Now I Wanna Be Your Dog”—my ringtone. The caller ID tells me that it’s Sara. I looked from the phone to that place I always look when I know I’m about to do something I shouldn’t, then back to the iPhone, and say “Fuck it” again and answered the phone. “Hello?” The quick lip of Tone Loc blessed my ears once again. “Yeah homie. That bitch called the feds on a nigga. You can go back over there if you want. See homie, that’s my babygirl of two years. I ain’t gonna just let the bitch go like that. Aight homie, I’ll get up with you.” Click. I flared my nostrils and frown, sipped some whiskey, re-lit my joint, turned the station to TV Land, got into the episode of Cheers that was already in progress and wondered if old Sammy Malone ever dealt with shit like this while compiling that legendary black book of his.