Slowly pieces of her began to cling to me. I took over the task of making sangria and got to be good at it. I began to pick up the occasional Spanish phrases she would utter when my dick was in her. I recited them to myself on the nights I masturbated alone in my bed, my brain clogged with sticky sexy thoughts of her. I became obsessed with her long dark hair, and loved to look at it and feel it falling down over and around me when she was on top. I learned to enjoy grabbing her wide hips as she offered her mind-blowing, wonderful pussy from behind, watching her head bury itself in the pillow, trying to hide from the intensity of my rock hardness in her sweet softness. I found a supermarket not far from her house that carried Goya products and tried to score a few brownie points by picking up things like adobo seasoning for her.
After several months of seeing each other, she started to occasionally ask me if she was fulfilling my Latina fantasy. She would jokingly apologize for not being intimately familiar with West Side Story, or for not having Jennifer Lopez’s ass, or for not liking the Latin house music I had come to enjoy since moving to New York, or for hating Taco Bell. I would laugh warily at these jokes, hoping she was not serious. Sometimes she would laughingly referring to herself as my “El Diario ho.” I always got angry and told her it wasn’t funny. I didn’t like her calling herself a ho. Since I showed our “sexship” respect, I felt she should too, and her words were hypocritical to me. In spite of those occasional bumps in the road, we hung on together for fifteen months. The sex continued to be amazing, and so did she.
And then late one night in bed after giving me one of her mind-blowing forty-five-minute blowjobs that left me dry as the desert she said, “William, how would you feel about me seeing other people?”
My state of post-ejaculatory bliss evaporated.
“Excuse me?”
“Well,” she began as she sat up to lie back on the pillows propped up in the bed, “I went on a date with a guy before I met you, but it went badly, so I didn’t see him anymore. I ran into him a couple of months ago, and we talked about that horrible date we had, and we’ve talked a little more since then, and…” Her voice trailed off. For the first time in fifteen months her voice was ugly to me.
I sat completely up.
“What’s his name, Eva?” I asked, swallowing hard.
She hesitated a moment. “His name is Harold.”
I paused, trying to figure out if she was just being coy. “His whole name, Eva,” I said, biting off the words.
She paused, finally catching my meaning. “His name is Harold Manuel Ortíz.”
“Ah,” I said.
She frowned. “Does it really matter, William?”
“Is it because I’m…I’m…not…” I tried another way. “Is it because I’m white?”
She seemed to grow angry.
“Is what because you’re white? Sea lo que sea, William. We have
never gone out on a real date. I have never met your family though you’ve gone to visit them twice and they’ve come here once. I have never been to any of the functions at your job, nor have I met any of the friends you’ve made here. And I’m not angry, William. Sea lo que sea.”
I was speechless.
“You’ve kept me in a tiny corner of your life,” she continued. “And I haven’t complained. But if you had really wanted me, you would have made a bigger place for me. You’re a smart man, a successful man. Hell, a gorgeous man. Master of the universe. You know how to get what you want out of life. Half the time life hands it to you and all you have to do is reach out for it! So I know you would have tried to get more from us if you really wanted more.”
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, Evangeline. But I’ve just been…trying to figure out how to…and you’re always acting like nothing between us can ever be serious because of how we got together. So I—”
She cut me off dismissively, waving her hand at me as if to shoo away a fly. She raised her voice to me for the first time since we’d met. “William, you have dated many women before me. ‘Top shelf women,’ your brother calls them, right? You mean to tell me you have no idea how to let a woman know you’re serious about her? You didn’t know how to let me know you wanted more than what we have now? Face it, because I already have. Sea lo que sea. I just want to try something a little different now. I want to be more than—than—someone’s personal J-Ho.”
Now I was enraged. She didn’t get it. I really didn’t know how to be serious with a woman, a woman I respected and admired who had a huge impenetrable wall built around herself. Why would she automatically assume I did know?
I raised my voice to her for the first time since we’d met. “I’m so sick of this shit! Why can’t you try ‘something different’ with me? The way we are now…you set this up! These are the terms you set! Your terms! Was I supposed to assume you wanted me to sweep you off your feet? And by the way, Evangeline, you aren’t the easiest person to get to know. Since your parents died you’ve pretty much shut everyone out, so forgive me if I couldn’t figure out how to get in, or if I was waiting for you to let me in. I’m not a lover boy with all the answers. You think because I’ve dated a lot of women that I automatically know how to handle every woman I meet. I’m not Prince Charming or a mind reader. I’m not some Mighty Whitey americano that goes around sweeping women off their feet with flowers and candy and shit. I’m not some smooth operator who knows what women want and can just make whatever he wants to happen happen. Why would you expect me to know what to do when you’re different from every woman I’ve ever known?”
There was silence.
“Mighty Whitey,” we both repeated. Then we cracked up laughing because we had spoken simultaneously.
I caught my breath first. “That was a good one, huh?”
She continued to chuckle. “It was. I think my way with words is rubbing off on you.”
“Maybe so,” I agreed.
There was silence.
“What do we do now?” she asked.