Twenty Five

                                                 

Cigalit

                                     

                                                    Kofi Fosu Forson

When I was young, boys rolled stockings up and around my thighs. Soon after, they joined the army. We were never the same. Roadside bombings were a common thing. We watched as tourists came to see The Holy Land.

Here on Christopher Street, I can hardly lift a pen to write the word “tit.” The smell of summer makes me sick. I usually go swimming in the Bronx. My grandparents live there. “We are good to our people,” they always say. They give me money in the thousands. I must say, we are good to our own people.

I love sleeping in the nude, especially in the summer. I lie there, feeling the beads of sweat form in some unusual places on my body. I live with a friend. We exchange similar stories about escaping gun fire.

Across the street, the buffed boys in tank tops argue through the night. The sound of it..? It’s violent. My roommate and I would start gossiping about men. I like aggressive men. Doing it is all about aggression. Once I get beyond foreplay, all I want to do is bite, scratch and hit.

So why then did I fall for a poet? They see with their hearts, think with their minds. Men don’t think with their minds. He came on wanting to light my cigarette. I usually don’t smoke. I take out a cigarette when I want attention. And of course I don’t have a light. So he was doing pretty good so far.

I had him come over. It’s funny, isn’t it? I was sitting there, thinking of a million ways to do one thing. I made a tiny move and he was on top of me. Animals get this way, like they want to strangle their victim. I didn’t give him any but he sure kissed good.

How do I say this? “Doing it…” I don’t believe in it. At least not the way most people do it. The whole thing about taking your clothes off to do it! Do what? Yeah but I love watching it. I recently saw one with Lydia Lunch.

New York girls! Don’t mess with them! They might take a knife out on you…Ditch you for another man right in the middle of sex. New York girls! They would make a dyke out of you. They did me.

Sex with that man was like going through the motion. Oh, so I’m taking my clothes off. Oh, so now I’m naked. Oh, so like I’ll fall on my back and open my legs. Oh, are you in? Oh! Oh! Oh! So like now we’re doing it. Wait; let me try it on top. I think I’ll sit here for a while. He doesn’t like it. He’s getting up. Oh, so now we’re doing it like dogs. Is that it? That was a piece of cake. I can go home now and listen to Abba.

Soon enough we went from foreplay to “no” play. He became strictly… “A friend.”

Honestly, I found myself. I was a New York-Israeli dyke. I did the bars, masqueraded as a man. I even learned how to spit. New York is perfect for spitting. But it wasn’t New York that brought me my true love. I was studying up in Sweden when I met me “a honey.” She was pale as ice. We were the perfect car crash…The dancing, the drinking, the hand-holding by the beach, the soft kisses late at night. The sex! The sex! We were true dykes.

She wanted a daughter. I left for Israel. The last I heard, she had gotten pregnant. I’m thinking that one day I will find a man, an aggressive man, who lifts weights, who can and will be able to make love to me like a woman.