Tears on a Sunday Afternoon - Michael Presley [14]
“Man, in this life, love is all we got. Without it, we are animals,” Brian said.
“Let me tell you what my grandmother told me before I turned fifteen. She thought I hadn’t started getting my dick warm yet, but I had. I listened anyway.”
“So you’ve lived your entire life based on what your grandmother told you?” he asked.
“Her advice has stood the test of time and experience.”
“I definitely want to hear this.”
“She told me that in this world there are whores, pimps and johns.”
“Your grandmother told you that when you were fifteen?”
“Yeah, she did.”
“What did she mean?”
“Brian, think of all your relationships and you’ll see that in all of them you have been either a whore, a pimp or a john.”
Brian looked around the room for answers. “Go ahead. Keep talking.”
“You see what separates the pimp from the john is feelings and, at any point, the pimp could be the john. In the game, a man who’s in control is always the pimp. The john, therefore, is trying to be the pimp but first he has to go through the whore. All men want to be the pimp, but the whore is the most important part of this equation because she can break down either the pimp or the john. She’s already broken the john because he has to come to her. You feel me?”
Brian looked at me. “You are motherfucking crazy.”
Brian wasn’t listening as much as he was fighting and that was sad. He wanted to be in another game other than the one he was living in. He was holding on to hope. The short rope of love; in other words, a blind man’s precipice.
“The pimp has no feelings for his whore. The day he develops feelings for her is the day he loses everything, including her, and then he becomes a john. And that’s what she wants.”
“And the john?”
“The john wants the whore but the whore can’t be his until he becomes the pimp. The john, in essence, is subservient to the whore. He has to take what she gives. The pimp, on the other hand, takes from the whore. The whore means absolutely nothing to him.”
“May God have mercy on you if you ever have a female child.”
I looked down at the table. “I can’t change the world if I have a female child. All I can do is convey knowledge to her and my job is done.”
“So you’re a pimp?” he asked as I once more got up from the table.
My eyes became cloudy as if the sun had made way for Katrina. “In life, sometimes you are all three, and right now, I’m at that point in my life. I’m a pimp because I listened to my grandmother. I’m a whore because I get fucked every time I go home and I’m a john because I’m trying to go through a whore to become a pimp.” I reached for the door.
“You all right?” Brian asked.
“No, but one day I will be.”
I took a seat at the back of the restaurant, away from the incoming traffic. I was seated in the shadows of life and time, light casting recognition on one part of me, the other part needing closer observation. The waitress, a shapely young black woman in her early twenties, wearing tight-fitting black pants and a tee with the restaurant logo on it, presented her attributes to me.
“Hello, Sir, my name is Leila. Can I get you something?” she asked, whipping her writing pad from her back pocket.
“What are you offering?” I took her eyes in mine.
She presented the menu to me. “This.”
I didn’t look at it. “What else?”
“Something that’s off the menu?” she asked, smiling.
“It depends on whether there’s a cost associated with it.” I reached out to pick up the menu.
“Everything in life has a cost. It depends on when you’re planning to pay.”
I liked her. “Leila, let me have a Heineken.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah, for now. Maybe I’ll add to that later on.” I noticed a white man who had just walked into the bar.
“Do you want to make a preemptive strike?” she asked seductively.
“Maybe later on but, for now, add on a Budweiser and some privacy.”
She gave me the ‘who do you think you are’ look and walked away, showing me what black men’s dreams are made of.
I got up and shook Bill’s hand. Bill was a skinny white retired NYC detective that I had hired. He had