“Look at her eyes. They wide open. Whatever he’s doin ain’t doin much for her imagination. And she’s probably drugged cause she thought if she danced with him, he would take her somewhere. I ain’t never expected that from nobody. I remember the day I decided I was in the world as a result of myself, that I wasn’t born but was spit from a volcano. And that’s the way I like it, cause I don’t need nobody’s five senses but my own for me to close my eyes.”

“Since you’re so in touch with your senses, have you seen Alice?”

“It’s not my week to watch her.”

Fed up, I walked away from Pauline and made my way toward the front door. I was leaning against the wall near the elevator cooling off when Alice came out of the apartment. I liked the way the flow of her bell-bottoms suggested the shape of her legs. And when she swung her arms, the way the mound of her shoulder curved into her upper arm made my skin pebble. And by the time the bell shape of her nose, the proud stones in her cheeks, and her thickly fleshed lips were up in my face, I was hard.

“You looking for me?” she asked.

“I was just wondering where you were. I can only take so much of Otis and Pauline.”

“That’s good. I saw how you handled those women a little while ago. I was wondering how long you were going to go for their shit.”

“I’ve been wondering how long I’m going to go for yours.”

“I can’t believe you, Mouth. You’re fighting back.”

“You like to fight, don’t you?”

“Every chance I get. That’s why I like Pauline. She fights all the time.”

“Yeah, but she ought a lighten up sometimes.”

“She only eases up on people who take her on.”

“What you thinking about?” I asked after a lull.

“I’ve been trying to remember how it felt the first time I went to bed with someone, but I can’t. That’s probably because I didn’t know what I was doing, which was about the way it was the last time I went to bed with someone. I don’t even remember who either of the people were. What about you, Melvin? Do you remember the first person you had sex with?”

“Yeah. It was with a girl named Marcy Jones. And I didn’t know what I was doing either. Do you remember her?”

“Yeah.”

“I was about seventeen and I invited her over my house during the Easter break. So she comes over and I put on some sides. I tried to be slick and put on The Heartbeats. You’re a Thousand Miles Away. Well, before I had a chance to close the gap, Marcy grabs my hand and says, ‘Let’s dance.’ We finally ended up in my bedroom but I didn’t feel like I had anything to do with it. I knew I was a slow starter but it didn’t look like she was going to allow me to participate in the activity at all. I was just a hitchhiker going along for the ride but never getting a chance to drive. That wasn’t my idea of the way to lose my cherry.”