Give It To Me. Ana Castillo

cheddar?) We have a glass of champagne (Read: Andre) and toast to our love. (?!) We’re playing Barry White and you do a slow strip tease for me . . .

      She wanted to interrupt and ask why he couldn’t do a strip tease for her but held out to see where they were going on the good-libidinous-ship lollipop.

      You straddle my lap, he said, and I put my penis inside you. I get it in way deep in that wet pussy of yours, like I always knew it was. You’re wet for me now, right, baby?

      Holy cow. Heavens to Murgatroyd. Silly Rabbit, tricks were for kids. Uh, yeah.

      8

      One evening Palma’s gay friend Randall called her to go to his bar. Why do you have to say he is gay? A woman who was no longer Palma’s friend asked when she said, Randall, my gay friend . . . It was called putting it into context. What she was going to say about him would not have meant at all the same thing if you didn’t know he was gay. Being gay wasn’t incidental. Randall was in her bedroom, patting her off after their shower with no hard-on, maybe a slight salute to be a good sport. I am a man, after all, honey, he said. But just ‘cause it goes up it don’t mean it wants to go in. He gave a slight shudder for effect. Theoretically, they each had at least some of the equipment the other needed to get off. So what’s the problem? Palma Piedras asked. It was mere curiosity. Okay, a little turned on. She wasn’t in love with Randall. If they never fucked it was okay. I’m doing research for the Kinsey Report sequel, she said, and gave his ding-dong a tug. (He actually pushed her hand away.) But you like those effeminate types, she said. The cross-dressers with Posturepedic posteriors, implants here, there, and everywhere, and daily hormone shots. Palma cupped her olive-toned hands first over her breasts and then the butt cheeks.

      I don’t like women, Randall stated the obvious. Not that way. He elaborated to enlighten her: I like the idea of a woman in a hard body with a dick. Sometimes, he said, I’ll dress like a bitch and let a tranny have her way with me. She nodded. Sex was very complicated and with the strict exception in any shape, form, or fashion of taking advantage of a child or a mentally incompetent adult, or any unwilling participant, for that matter, who could judge what got your rocks off? Randall pushed her gently down on the bed and started to jack off. His eyes were closed and she pulled him down next to her and started her own thing on herself. It was a true bonding experience. When she quivered after making herself come, Randall leaned over. He put his mouth on one of her nipples and gave it those little bites you felt from small fish when snorkeling. He bit the other one harder and she lifted herself up to go down on him. His dick and balls were the freshest Palma had ever smelled on a man. Or not smelled. He took impeccable care of himself. Don’t do it, if you don’t want, girl, he said, but he was already hard. Her clit and nipples were stiff as she sucked him off like she was lost at sea with no food or drink. Fucking bitch, he said when he started to come, pushing Palma’s head into him. Fucking mamacita. Hija de su puta madre. She hadn’t known that Randall spoke Sex Spanish. Dámelo, papi negro lindo, Palma muttered and he did and afterward the would-be Kinsey researcher knew that if she ever mentioned what had transpired, most likely, he’d land her in a hospital.

      Palma went to see Randall. He and the Chicago transplant hit it off years before because they both hailed from the Midwest as he put it. He said Chicago. He was from Milwaukee but she let him feel that was close enough. There were no female customers, and while that didn’t bother Palma since she was there to visit with Randall, get a buzz with a free cocktail, and let off some steam, sometimes the men in there didn’t like the presence of pheromones. Or naturally harvested tits or twat. One gay told her he thought “bitches smelled like bad fish.” Oh? she said, kinda like your balls? In women’s bars sometimes she’d fared no better. Palma once got blindsided with a left hook after taking a stool in a lesbian bar in Mexico City that she didn’t know was being reserved for somebody’s “vieja.” It perplexed her as to why straight-up gays and lesbians sometimes hated on each other. At least the old-school ones did in bars in Mexico and South America and along the back roads of San Antonio and Tijuana. And if the truth were told, even in gay-activated places like San Francisco and Madrid.

      She waited for Randall to catch a sec to come talk to his gal pal from behind the bar. So, what’s going on with you and Ursula, lady? He asked. He already knew she was gone. Why? Palma, who liked being thought of as a lady (although she fit in a post-modern Gaga definition of it at best), asked. He explained that his cousin Ed was coming to Albuquerque to attend a seminar at the med school. Oh, he is a big, good-looking, successful man, Randall said. He used to work for a pharmaceutical company but has started his own, selling holistic supplements. (Palma’s friend went to take a couple of drink orders and eventually was back and continued.) I know you like it both ways, he said; his waxed eyebrows went up.

      I heard the same about you, Palma said.

      Whatever, Randall said. After a moment, he resumed the topic: You are the only woman I know to fix up with Ed. Who am I, anyway? Randall pretended certain self-importance over the matter while he busied himself drying a glass. The millionaire matchmaker? he said. He was pale like a lot of white people were in New Mexico, which was stupefying to Palma because the one thing that the state guaranteed was sunshine. Ed goes by don Ed now, Randall laughed. He followed that don Miguel to Mexico, came back all spiritualized, looking like a born-again Buddha, quit his job, left his wife . . . oh, honey. Randall fanned himself with a cluster of cocktail napkins.

      Wife?

      Divorced, honey, Randall said, I never could stand that pretentious beyotch with her Beamer and plaid Ann Taylor capris and equestrian lessons. Puh-lease, girlfriend. Don Ed looks like a white Shaquille O’Neal. Go get you some while you can. Plenty for everybody.

      Big. Palma Piedras liked that. She hadn’t had sex in over a month. It was time to go back out on the playing field. Give don Ed my email, she said. Her cell phone was for lovers, past and present. The landline, for the current amore. And email, the application form.

      9

      How Palma Piedras got to Albuquerque was via Rodrigo’s career. Her Colombian ex-husband was not in a cartel. He was a school administrator. They met in Chicago when he was looking for a new job. A few months later he landed one in Albuquerque. They married in Reno, and not long after settling down, they bought the house that was now her home sans Rodrigo. He was at his job about a year when his brother, who she had laid odds on then was in a cartel, contacted him. He said that their mother was ailing and that Rodrigo had to go back to Medellín, or actually, the outskirts of that mad city. The couple went, pretending it was their idea and not a brother’s who was suspected of disappearing people as casually as flushing his turds down the toilet. The house in Albuquerque went up for sale, didn’t sell, went up again, didn’t sell, while renters through a property manager came and went. In the end they hung on to it. “Hanging on,” an operative term that seemed to have hit Mulchdom like a sudden cloud of tear gas released for maximum crowd control and had otherwise been known worldwide as The Recession.

      In Colombia, their Mulch marriage broke down. She wasn’t able to prove it, but Palma Piedras, who’d kept her maiden name (having scarcely been a maiden at the wedding chapel), had the distinct feeling her husband’s Sundays, which he spent at his ex-wife’s home, had as much to do with re-kindling the flame with the ex as it did with their kid he left behind when he immigrated. That wasn’t what ended it. (It only helped.) Rodrigo told Palma that in Medllín it wasn’t proper or right for a wife to go anywhere without her husband. He meant an-y-where. And guess who got to care for the bedridden mother? (Why anyone would leave Palma in charge of his mother left even her to wonder.) Rodrigo deferred to the patrimony of the household. Rodrigo’s older brother didn’t exactly give anyone a choice when he told you what to do.

      You’ve changed, Palma told Rodrigo, who refused to do anything together and was out a lot. You have to change, he said. We’re not in your women’s lib country anymore. Besides, here you could be killed and nobody would care.

      Not long after that remark Palma did go somewhere. With one carry-on and her passport she made her way to the airport and never looked back. When the runaway wife returned to Albuquerque and filed for divorce, he did not contest.