Take Her Man

“Well, I need to study before class,” I said, breaking the silence. Good call.

“Me too,” Tamia said. She pulled some flash cards from her bag.

“Well, I’ll be in the back,” Alex said. “I’m not as brave as you ladies.” He gave Tamia, who was staring at her flash cards like we were about to take a final exam, one last look and walked away like a wounded cowboy. He’d lost the draw.

“Damn, girl. I guess you’ve already done your spring cleaning.” I looked at Tamia. “You had his ass wrapped around your finger.”

“Oh well. He’ll get over it,” Tamia said coldly.

“Tamia, why are you acting like that about Alex? I didn’t know things were that bad between you two. I thought it was just a color thing,” I said. I was really surprised by how blunt Tamia was being. It just wasn’t like her.

“You want the truth?” she asked without looking up from her flash cards.

“Hell, yeah.”

“I’ll tell you, but then you must promise to never tell anyone or bring it up again.” She finally looked up at me. I nodded my head. “I had sex with him.”

“What? When? Where? Why? How was it?” I asked, recalling all the important questions one asks after they’ve found out a friend has slept with someone.

“It was on our first date,” Tamia said, turning red. First-date sex was really not her style. “I mean there was something between us. Like sparks.”

“And?” I interrupted. She wasn’t giving me the good stuff.

“Well, we stopped by the library so he could pick up a book for class. We went down into the old book stacks and started kissing. It was playful at first,” she said, “but then we started touching each other.”

“And?”

“And…I put my hand in his pants. And I touched it.” My mouth fell open and I could tell I was blushing now too. Not Tamia! The good girl fucking around in the old library stacks! Why didn’t I think of that first?

“And?” I was begging like Pookie Po did for her treats.

“It was so big! It was, like, perfect. Just hard and…perfect,” Tamia said. I could see by the look in her eyes that she was reminiscing about how it had felt. Her look was deep and longing, as if he was standing in front of her.

Now, this is a bad place for Tamia to be in. Though she is the “good girl” of the bunch, Tamia loves oral sex. It’s just how she gets off. I, along with most of the other sisters I knew, were brainwashed to believe that enjoying oral sex (and a bunch of other myths about sex) made us “nasty girls,” but Tamia was the first woman I knew who openly said that was a bunch of bull. Our junior year, she left our Black Feminism professor speechless when she said our sexual desire as women wasn’t something we should be ashamed of or allow anyone to prescribe to us. Tamia stood in front of the entire class (men included) and said it was time for sisters to embrace their desires and figure out what they liked most in bed. After that outburst, she was on a one-woman mission to find her sexual passion, one self-fulfilling head job at a time. She didn’t have many partners, but when she did, it was definitely all about what Tamia wanted to do in the bedroom. Her 3T secret code name was “Head Mistress”—pun definitely intended.

“I had to taste it.” Tamia playfully slapped herself on the forehead.

“You went down on him?” I teased. “In the s

tacks at the library?”

“Yes,” she said coyly. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

“And?” I asked, trying to figure out where things had gone wrong. The story sounded great so far.

“Well, after he came—”

“In your mouth?” I stopped her. I had to ask. “Yuck.”

“Hell, no,” she answered. “You know I don’t do that. Anyway, after he came, he pulled a condom from his wallet and whispered in my ear, ‘Please let me feel you, please.’ It was so hot.”

“Damn, girl,” I said. “I’m feeling hot my damn self.” I started fanning myself.

“I know, it was like he was begging…. It was so erotic. I looked around and I didn’t see anyone, so I said yes,” Tamia went on. “Girl, he put that thing in me and I don’t know what came over me. I just went crazy. He had me up against the bookshelf, standing up, but I was riding the shit out of him. All he had to do was stand still. I was all over him, Troy.”

The gum I was chewing fell on my desk. Tamia’s sexual exploits always sounded like a damn porno movie. I was about to ask her if I could call Alex myself. I was on the market.

“Then he turned me around and we started doing it doggy style. I nearly pushed the damn bookshelf over, so I had to hold my ankles.”