Can't Get Enough of Your Love (11 page)

“You have thought about having a threesome, haven't
you?”

“Hmm?”

“I know you've thought about having a threesome, Lana,” she says.

“I haven't thought about it, but I know
you
have.”

Though Izzie never acts on her fantasies, she sure has a ton of them. Most of them involve two men, each man “servicing her” (her phrase) while at the same time she “services” them. Izzie even says she has “toys” at home that feel
almost
like the real thing. “You have dildos and vibrators?” I had asked, and she said, “No, they're toys.” She has a different name for each, um, “member” of her single-woman's drawer, and from what she reveals during our Sunday talks, she has a lot more members in her “club” than I do, some long, some thick, some that vibrate, and some that even thrust.

“It's a nice fantasy, Lana. You should imagine it sometime.” She looks out the kitchen window at the pond. “But if you
had
to have two of them at the same time, which two would you choose?”

“Come on, Izzie. That's not going to happen, so why should I answer?”

“Why won't it happen?”

“Because I'm extremely careful, that's why.”

She turns from the window. “Well, what if one day you aren't so careful?”

If I don't answer her perverted questions, she'll keep asking—in different ways—until I do. “Okay, okay. Uh, Karl and … Juan Carlos.”

And the two of them would probably put my stuff in traction for a week. I should have said Juan Carlos and Roger. They'd be gentler. Karl and Roger? Man, it'd be like making love to a saltshaker and a pepper shaker.
Though the contrasts—one fast, one slow, one fierce, one tender—might be nice. Mmm … If I had Karl working it down there and Roger licking—

“They're the freakiest, huh?”

“Hmm?”

“You were just thinking about it, weren't you?”

I nod. “It was pretty hot.”

She smiles. “I knew it.”

“Roger is actually the freakiest,” I say quickly.

“The white boy?”

I hate it when she calls him that, though “freaky” is not quite the right word for Roger. “Roger just happens to be the most adventurous.”

Izzie leans closer. “How so?”

I know this will make her church drawers moist. “Well, he has this thin gauze instead of curtains in front of this great big window at his apartment, and sometimes we do it behind it, and other times …”

“What?” She scoots forward on her chair.

“Other times we leave it completely open, and we don't care who might walk by and see us.” Okay, I haven't been bold enough to do that yet, but Izzie won't know.

“You nasty girl!”

“It isn't nasty. And the next time we're there, we might just leave the door open a few inches, you know, just in case anyone walking by might want to … join us.”

“Whoo.”

I always get a “whoo” out of her. “One time Roger attacked me in his kitchenette, doing me right there on the counter while I kept on eating.”

“Oh, my God!”

“Trust me, Izzie,
never
try to eat hot soup and make love at the same time.” Though slurping chicken noodle soup while a man is slurping
you
is kind of nice.

She fans the air in front of her face. “It's getting hot in here. Let's go upstairs.”

We go upstairs, curling up at either end of the couch, me in some ratty sweats, Izzie looking like an advertisement for
Church Women's Wear Daily
.

“Would you
ever
let two of your men service you at the same time?” she asks.

“No.” Not unless they tag-teamed me or something. One would have to finish before the other began. I could never do both of them at the same time. I want to live to see forty. “And anyway, why so many perverted questions today? Didn't you just come from church?”

Izzie laughs softly. “Yes. But come on, Lana, you're living one of my main fantasies. You're living a fantasy that a lot of women have. How many women have the services of
three
men? You're the only one I know, and I'm naturally curious.”

“And horny.”

“I can't help it.”

“And nosy.”

She looks away, but she's still smiling.

“Can you ask less perverted questions?”

“Okay, okay.” She thinks a moment.

“Don't think too long, now.”

She looks at her hands. “I only seem to have perverted thoughts today. Oh, I know. Let's say that your friend arrived and you were out of tampons. Who would go out and get them for you?”

Izzie's non-perverted questions are often pretty dumb. “I would never ask them to do that.”

“Just suppose, then.”

I sigh. “Hmm. Karl would say, ‘You trippin',' or something like that.”

“He wouldn't go?”

I shake my head. “Probably not. And Juan Carlos
would
go, but he'd come back without them, telling me they were sold out.”

“So Juan Carlos would lie to you?”

“Not lie, exactly. He'd just be too embarrassed to buy them.” Juan Carlos even seems to have trouble handing me my underwear and bra when we're through.

“What about the white boy?”

“Roger—that's his
name
, Izzie—Roger would go, but I'd have to write it down in detail. He would probably U-Scan it and bring me the wrong size or brand.”

She rises and looks at my CDs in a little case on top of the TV. “What a strange collection of music. Do you listen to all of these?”

“It's their music, not mine.”

“And you leave it out in the open like this?”

I roll my eyes. “I listen to it, too.”

She blinks. “You mean … that this is the music you do it to.”

“Sometimes. I also listen to it when they're not here.”

“Interesting.” She holds up
Power Rock of the ‘70s
. “This
has
to be for the white boy. White boys like that rock ‘n' roll stuff.”

Not Roger. “No. Guess again.”

“Oh, please don't tell me Karl. I would lose so much respect for him.”

“It isn't Karl.”

“So it's the Mexican. But … power rock?”

I giggle. “Girl, you haven't lived until you've had a
Mexican playing power air guitar to some Led Zeppelin while jumping up and down on your bed wearing only a smile. It gets him going … and going.”

She pulls out a CD Karl had a guy make for me. “Hmm. Bessie Smith, John Coltrane, and Muddy Waters. This has to be the white boy trying to get in touch with the black experience.”

“Nope.”

“Karl?”

“He's older than old school, and trust me, doing it to some stomp music is the bomb.” Muddy Waters's “Mannish Boy” makes my waters muddy every time.

She runs her fingers over the rest of my collection. “That means that the white boy likes Keith Sweat, Al B. Sure, and Babyface?”

“Yep.”

“Hmm.”

“He has good taste, doesn't he?”

She shrugs. “These are all right.”

She's impressed. She just doesn't want to show it. “Roger even sings ‘Reasons' to me.”

“No.” She sits on the couch again.

I wince. “It isn't pretty, though he does know all the words. I make him whisper it to me now, and it is
très
erotic.”

“So he's one of those white boys who tries to act black.”

“No. He's himself all the damn time. He's too busy being Roger to be anyone else.”

“Uh-huh.” She sits and straightens her skirt. “He's just like all those wiggers walking around PH.”

“He isn't a wigger, Izzie.” Roger dresses like any other white man, I guess, and he doesn't sling the slang, as most wiggers do.

“Uh-huh. He sounds like one.”

“He isn't.”

She sighs and shakes her head. “Whatever. Anyway, I believe that all this revolving lust is going to end badly. I just know it.”

In addition to being the most perverted church person I know, Izzie thinks she's psychic. She makes goofy predictions all the time, like the time she predicted a white man would win the presidential election. “Hillary Clinton could have run, right?” she had said. She also thinks she can predict the weather, saying vague things like “We're going to be having some weather today.” I guess she has nothing better to do … until she gets home to her single-woman's drawer, that is.

“I see nothing but trouble from all this,” she adds.

“So far so good,” I say.

“Too
good,” she says. “And you know what they say about good things. All good things must come to an end.”

She's so quotable. She must read
Reader's Digest
. “They also say, whoever ‘they' are, that you can never have too much of a good thing, and I intend to have as much of a good thing as my booty can stand.”

She tsk-tsks me. “You're playing with fire, girl, and you know it.”

“At least I'm warm.” And sweaty most nights. Unlike Izzie, who, by her own admission, hasn't had a date since Clinton was in office and hasn't had sex with a living person since her senior prom.

She looks off into space, which means she's probably thinking up a perverted question. “If you had to part with two of them, or if two of them suddenly
wised up and dumped you, who would you want to stay with you?”

That's a depressing thought. “As I've been telling you, I need them all.”

“Oh, can't you just choose one and leave me the two leftovers?”

“So they can fulfill your fantasy, huh?”

“Yes. And I'll save so much money on double-A and C batteries.”

I have to laugh at that one. “Look, Izzie, I'm not parting with any of them if I can help it.”

“I didn't realize you were so needy.”

I scowl. “I'm not needy. It's just that none of them could support me by himself, not that I take any money from them.”

“Just their fluids.”

Izzie can't say the word “sperm” for some reason. “Right.”

She cocks her head to the side. “Couldn't the white boy support you?”

He could, but… “His name is Roger, Izzie. Say it.”

She refuses.

She'll never understand. “Roger could support me, but then I'd be the wife of the assistant director of interment of a cemetery until his daddy retires.”

“You're right. Not only would it be difficult to be seen in public with him, but it would be hard to tell people at dinner parties that your husband buries dead people for a living.” She looks hard at me. This will be a serious question. “What if …” She nods her head slowly. “What would happen if one of them got you pregnant?”

She's so tangential. “What? How'd you go from who can support me to one of them getting me pregnant?”

“If you got pregnant, you'd need some of their money, right?”

“That's not going to happen.” My men are keeping the Trojan condom people in business. There is going to be a two-condom minimum for entrance into this house. Hmm. Karl might need three, since he's been gone so long.

“Well,” she says, looking away, “it doesn't have to happen for real, does it? You know, just
tell
them you're pregnant and see what happens.”

I get this vision of a zebra-striped baby with red hair and a Spanish accent. Is it possible for three sperm from three different men to hit the egg at the same time? I bet it happens all the time in the movies.

“By the way, what do you do with their, um, fluids?” she asks.

“Their what?” I want to make her say “sperm.”

“Their fluids, you know.”

I squint and shake my head. “No. I'm not sure what you mean, Izzie.”

She sighs. “Their … sperm. What do you do with their sperm?”

I smile. I made her say it! “Oh. That. They take care of that.” With a simple flush of the toilet.

“So you don't collect their, um, fluids?”

I can't think of a nastier thing to do. “No.”

“Well, I heard about this woman who collected all of her man's fluids, and without his knowledge, she impregnated herself.”

I've just thought of a nastier thing. Izzie's good for bringing nasty into the house.

“And now,” she continues, “he has to pay eight hundred a month in child support, almost ten thousand dollars a year!”

Hmm. Calling that fluid-collecting woman a “pavement princess” would be too nice. “Why would any woman want to do all that?”

“Maybe her man was cute, and she wanted a cute baby.”

I shake my head. “She wanted the money, Izzie, plain and simple. She wanted to own him.”

She shakes her head. “Then she didn't ask for enough money. I read that it costs eighteen thousand dollars a year to raise a child.”

D-damn! That much? I
can't
be having a child with my measly hourly pay. “Where'd you read that?”

“Parenting
magazine.”

I blink. “You read that?”

“I'm a counselor, remember? I'm a surrogate parent to a lot of kids.”

That is a
very
scary thought.

“And that woman's man got off easy,” Izzie says. “He only has to give her eight hundred dollars a month.”

I roll my eyes. “But it's all so wrong for
him
, Izzie. He wore a condom. He didn't want to get her pregnant. He didn't want to start a family. He was practicing safe sex. He had an expectation of no impregnation.” My legal-assistant training sometimes comes in handy. “Hey, that rhymed.”

“But possession is nine-tenths of the law,” Izzie says, “and he
gave
his fluids to her, so it was rightfully her property to do with whatever she wanted to do.”

I get a vision of a woman lying in bed getting busy. She's saying, “You through, boo? Did it all come out? Have you been eating all your vegetables and wearing your boxers so your sperm can get some exercise? Good, good. No, no, I'll take care of it. You just rest
now, boo.” I see her going into the bathroom and reversing the condom, urging the sperm to swim and be free inside of her.