I hit him once, and I hit him again. He didn’t hit me back. I hit him again, harder, so he’d hit me back, but he just lay there moaning and fighting the air. He wasn’t fighting me. He wasn’t even seeing me. He was pulling at himself. I stopped and watched him pulling and punching at himself and pulling and punching again until he moaned again and stopped as abruptly as he had begun. The bed was wet, his groin was wet. His hands slippery with his own semen.

“That’s what you get being a snow queen.” It was Clementine.

“Huh?”

“I was watching you. You must have been asleep. You were yelling ‘nigger, nigger,’ in some high girlish voice so I knew it really wasn’t you saying that. You wouldn’t call yourself a nigger, would you?”

“Who’s that? How’d you get in?”

“Clementine, darling. Like I said, that’s what you get being a snow queen. Don’t you know white boys only want to get close enough to you so they can call you nigger to your face then have you fuck them hard up the ass to get your revenge? And you know what happens?”

“What, Clementine?”

“They put those business suits right back on, chile, and head straight back to those real estate offices or employment bureaus, and give us the same shit about not being qualified enough, or that the apartment’s just been rented, or they’re too tired now and if you come back to their room in about an hour they might be able to get it up for you. Shit, I know their tricks. I was one of their tricks. Now look at me.”

“Metro wasn’t like that.”

“And no black news story ever gets decent coverage, does it? You ever read about the charitable work the Elks was doing or the Daughters of the Eastern Star? Or any black man winning a prize for something outside the stadium or the disco dance floor? Huh? We’re all subway muggers and rapists and drag queens. Not men. And not black men loving other black men. Loving being black and men together.”

“Not Metro. He wasn’t like that.”

“You was his nigger. Face it. Your college degree wasn’t shit. All he wanted was your cock or your ass, but he was afraid to get it off the real streets he walked on.”

“No.”

“And you see this-here meat? You see it? Black, ain’t it? Real black. It’s greased and ready, Jesse. Fat as a Carolina sausage. Greased and ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“You coming home now, baby. I’m gonna get in that ass.”

“No.”

“Indubitably? That’s what I heard you moaning. Roll over.”

“No.”

“I said roll over. Spread it. People been asking me, and I got to know.”

“No.”

“Goddamn it. You my nigger now. I’m gonna get in that ass.”