“That’s all right. But I know what I’m talkin bout. I’m qualified, you dig. I just had to give up seed for skin. Seed for skin. Trouble is a man, eh? So what! What you broads want me to do about it, throw up?”

“Yeah, if that’ll shut you up!”

“All right, I will!” His throat groaned but he clapped his hand over his mouth and wobbled away.

My head throbbed. I tried moving but it was too late.

“Just a minute. Don’t leave us so soon,” one of the women said. “We’d like to hear from another male man. We’ve heard from Sir Rap a Lot, but since he had some difficulty talking with his mouth full of whatever he was trying to say, maybe you’d like to speak on the topic of Trouble Is a Man!”

“I’m not in it,” I said.

“But you’ve already been picked. And there’s always a chance that if you chew your cabbage slick enough, one of us might be willing to relieve you of some of that sweet batter we know you got backed up in you.”

“Come on, sweetie, tell us what your menu is!” They were ganging up on me.

“What do you think about the shoulda, woulda, coulda blues?”

“Have you given up all your seed for skin?”

“All right,” I said, “if you really want to know—for me trouble ain’t a man; it’s my hand, cause for the last two years I’ve given up seed for foreskin and come away with a very tender groin!”

“Uh-oh, the male man is gettin an attitude.”

“That’s right,” I said. “So what are you gonna do? Cause I’m ready to fuck or fight. But I’m not gonna listen to any more of this shit about your claims to pain!”

I expected a comeback and was surprised when none came. I found my way into the next room and saw Pauline sitting by herself in a corner. When she saw me, her puffy cheeks slackened and their fullness drained down into her jaws. I wondered at what point she started believing that she wasn’t too much of nothing and not enough of anything. Maybe never having been asked to dance had something to do with it. But as the saying goes: If you dance to the music, you got to pay to the piper. Ask your mama.

“I haven’t seen you since we got here,” I said.

“You’ll get over it,” she said.

“What is it, Pauline? You got a beef with me or something?”

“You givin yourself too much credit, Mouth. I don’t get that excited about nobody. Not since I was a little girl and asked my mama to tell me about the world. She spit in my face and said, ‘Now you know about the world.’ You see that dude over there all wrapped up with that woman?”

“What about them?”