Playing Hard To Get

1

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players…

—Jacques in William Shakespeare’s As You Like It

And on this luxurious, $5 million stage, nestled on the twenty-second floor of the desirous address of One Central Park West, known to the world as Trump Towers, is an astute and determined player, a woman who, it would seem to anyone watching, was preparing for the role of her life.

No, she wasn’t making good on girlhood dreams of winning an Oscar or Emmy. Nonetheless, her starring role was just as riveting, just as compelling. Simply put, the angelically divine black beauty was attempting what other tired women had been trying to do at every other place in the world for as long as time existed—go to bed without having sex.

So, in the privacy of her bathroom, beneath a $10,000 Kalco chandelier that cast a sinister light over her freshly permed and then pressed hair, Tamia Dinkins slid an unnecessarily thick, overnight, extra-long, winged, and superabsorbent pad into the crotch of her aqua lace panties.

“Urggh,” she groaned at the prehistoric, uncomfortable weight and width of the thing between her thighs. It was so ridiculous and Tamia wondered how she ever, ever concealed these things beneath her acid-washed jeans and EnVogue-tight miniskirts when she’d gotten her period in junior high school. Happily, because of nature and the intelligent folks at Playtex, she’d outgrown these little mattresses now; however, that didn’t stop her from putting one on. Charleston, her ongoing leading male for the past six months, was in the bedroom. He’d been out there waiting nearly every night for two months, and quite frankly, Tamia was tired of how comfortable Charleston seemed to be getting with coming to her place, having acrobatic sex, slipping into a coma, and waking in the morning only to leave and return hours later to do it all again. And while the leading lady kept telling herself that she needed time and space to think about things with Charleston and where they were going, really she just wanted a night alone. She’d watch some tacky old R&B music videos, have a glass of overpriced Chardonnay, and think about nothing until the morning.

“Babe, what are you doing in there?” Tamia heard Charleston excitedly calling from the bedroom. He was probably already naked, his arms and legs spread out on her silk bedspread like a honeydusted cobweb.

“I’m coming,” she said. She hoped he’d noticed the Midol tablets she’d conveniently left on the nightstand.

?

On another stage, not too far from the last, in the pricey and historic Hamilton Heights enclave in Harlem, Tamia’s best friend was preparing for a less than convincing performance to achieve the same goal. Somewhere between Friday-night Bible study and walking into her refurbished brownstone, First Lady Troy Helene Hall decided that her husband, the good Reverend Dr. Kyle Hall, who’d come into her life like a prince in a fairy tale, wasn’t getting any either. In fact, it had now been exactly a month since Troy and Kyle had shared more than prayers in their antique Thomas Day bed. And even then, it had been a Valentine’s Day “treat” (Troy actually said this).

Trying her best to escape a diva past filled with enough Chanel and Lauren to solidify her top ranking among any circle of purified BAPs, a newly sanctified and debatably saved Troy prided herself on being less dubious and creative in her method of withholding sex than Tamia. She knew about the old “I’m on my period” maxi pad trick but thought no good Christian wife had any business lying to her husband like that. She thought that if she didn’t want to have sex, she didn’t have to have sex. It was that simple.

“No sex,” Troy rehearsed telling Kyle as she laid in bed, dressed in a white cotton smock that, combined with her smooth fawn skin and flaxen hair, made her look like an eighteenth-century house girl. Worse, beneath the frock, she had on the biggest, most raggedy, stretched-out, and faded panties she could find in the back of her drawer.

Her knees tight and her hands crossed above a Bible that rested atop her vagina, Troy waited in bed for Kyle to come out of the bathroom so they could pray and go to sleep in peace. But when the reverend did open the bathroom door, Troy wished she’d had on that superabsorbent maxi pad. Standing inside of the crowned rectangle that separated their underused bed from their underused spa tub, was her husband. Nude and oiled to a shine, he had a silver ring clasping his erect penis.

?

On the third stage, the player needed no pads or Bi

bles for her theatrical run, for it was a one-woman show. Alone in a California king-size bed that came to her Alpine, New Jersey, mansion with special measurements to provide a comfortable sleep for her superstar basketball-playing husband, Tasha LaRoche had only two props—a waterproof, neon green vibrator that rested in its normal place beside her in the bed and a cell phone she held to her ear.

“You’re so damn sexy, baby. I want you right now,” a stern yet mischievous voice insisted through the phone. It was her husband. Lionel was in Miami, getting ready to play the Heat the next night in a March matchup.

“Yeah, Daddy. I want you, too,” Tasha said with her voice as breathy and childlike as a porn star’s. Her nearly sable skin blushed with fever as she imagined her husband’s big, chocolate hands grabbing for her. Lionel knew how to handle a woman. He was forceful and demanding, yet still careful and comforting. “What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m going to get you on the bed and kiss every inch of your body, slowly, until you beg me to get on top of you.”

“Yes,” Tasha moaned, imagining her husband’s lips brushing against her breasts. Without opening her eyes, she reached for the other prop and pulled it to her. “I want you inside of me right now.”

“I’m coming, baby, but first I have to get you ready. I have to move my lips down below your navel—”

“Oh, yes, Lionel. Yes!” Tasha slid the vibrator between her legs and clicked. A swift pulse buzzed beneath the sheet.

“And then I’m going to—”

“Yes!” Tasha pushed the insides of her pelvis toward the little toy and waited to hear her husband’s next command. “What are you going to…? Lionel? Hello?”

Silence.

?

After being tackled to her bed by a nude man with five moving limbs, Tamia thought that maybe Charleston had been on the wrestling team at Dartmouth. With her legs cocked back to her sides and his middle pushed hard into her, she wondered how and when he’d managed to manipulate her body in such a way. And she was still in her nightclothes.

Charleston was a decent-looking man. He had clear, brown skin and nice teeth. He kept his bald head shaved and his ears clean. His eyes weren’t crossed and he didn’t have shaving bumps (Tamia’s deal breakers). Presentable was a good word, Tamia thought the first time she saw him. He looked like someone any woman wouldn’t mind taking somewhere and claiming. However, even with this, there was nothing about Charleston that made him handsome or striking or especially sexy.

But really that didn’t matter. Men like Charleston seldom carried their good looks on their shoulders. They had everything they needed to be considered “handsome, striking, and especially sexy” in their pockets. A self-made millionaire, Charleston started his good looks when he won his first medical malpractice lawsuit, right out of Dartmouth Law. His clients, five transplant patients who’d contracted HIV due to receiving infected organs from the same untested donor, were awarded $25 million each. His cut was 30 percent.

“Is that a pad?” Charleston asked, stilling grinding into Tamia. “You have your period?”

“Yeah.” Tamia thought she sounded convincing…at least confident. “I guess we can’t…we can’t have sex.” She raised her eyebrows matter-of-factly and shrugged her shoulders, ready for Charleston to get his 225-pound, overly exercised body off of hers.

“That’s weird—I could’ve sworn you had it two weeks ago.”

Tamia was silent. Saying anything wrong here could get her into trouble two weeks later when she really did get her period.

“Well, what day is it?” he asked.

“What?” She was sure he couldn’t mean what she already knew he did.

“Is it the first day? Because we had sex two days ago.”

“What difference does it make?”

“Are you bleeding heavily or lightly?” Charleston tried to maneuver his hand into the top of her night pants, but Tamia flicked it away. “Let me check.”

“Yuck,” she protested, pulling away from him. “I don’t do that. We’ve never had sex on my period.”

“Stop being such a prude. Some women love having sex on their period,” Charleston said, looking down at his penis. “We can put a towel down.”

“Let’s not do that and say we did.” Tamia pulled away from him and groaned, finding her way to her side of the bed as he sat with a surprised look. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Was he that desperate that he’d put his hand on her pad? Yeah, she’d had sex while on her period before, but things had changed since she was young and horny, living in a boxy walk-up in Alphabet City as she starved her way through NYU Law and dreamed of the life she now had. Now they were lying on $400 white Egyptian cotton sheets and the concierge would be there to pick up the laundry in the morning. She was one of seven black owners in the entire building and four were basketball players. The last thing she needed was the cleaners talking about how they’d found blood on her sheets. Tamia sucked her teeth at the thought before reminding herself that there would be no blood on the sheets. She didn’t really have her period. Her performance was so convincing, she’d convinced herself.