Crave Part 1

by Shae Sanders

“Meet the new neighbor,” Lo said, and as their eyes snapped to me, my heart pounded in my chest. All four of these negroes were fine. All of them. I’m doomed.

Oh. He was one of those. I bet if I checked his social media, I’d find all manner of quotes about grinding, hustling, and being built different from all the lazy peons who prefer not to work themselves into an early grave. I respected hard work, sure, but not at the expense of my peace.

They say sex is spiritual. That any time you sleep with someone, your souls are inextricably tied together for life. Thanks to my field of study, I was intimately acquainted with such theories which, let’s face it, are at least partly designed to prevent women from having and enjoying premarital sex. But even though I knew the truth intellectually, that sex is normal and natural and healthy, even; the mental conditioning I’d received most of my life was still hard to shake. My guardians had me in the pew every Sunday and I learned what all church girls learn…sex is for your husband only.

“My pleasure. And just for the record, you never, ever have to tell me to eat your pussy. When it comes to you, my default mode is to have my face planted between your thighs.”

“I think I can speak for all of us when I say we like you. You’re dope as fuck. Smart. Sexy. Funny. So we’re not just trying to smash. We like spending time with you, too. You can get wined and dined and all that good shit but if you want your back blown out or your pussy ate, you can get that, too. It’s whatever you want. It’s all about you.”

“Most people say they’re monogamous. Again, because that’s what y’all were raised to believe. My generation was raised by the internet and each other. We believe nothing and everything at the same damn time.”

The running count of men in the house whose tongues I'd tasted currently stood at three. The differences between them were subtle but unmistakable. Angelo kissed like he lived…with arrogant confidence, essentially taking over and dominating. Jamal kissed with urgency like he wanted to rip my clothes off. And G? Slow and deep like he was making love to my mouth. Which I wouldn’t have minded, to be quite honest.

I felt a little self-conscious once I finally had all my clothes off, but only because I had to make an entrance into the next room instead of lying down on the bed. Nevertheless, I persisted, because that’s what you do when you want the dick.

him. I knew then that there was no way in hell he didn’t eat pussy. Shit, he probably practiced twice a day like an Olympic athlete. I wished I had a medal to drape around his neck.

I smiled at that. Twenty years ago, ‘come over and watch a movie’ was code for getting a hand job on a dusty couch in somebody’s parents’ basement. But I was a grown-ass man tonight and Skye was a grown-ass woman. And an intellectual. For all I knew, she really did wanna watch a movie and then discuss that shit afterward. Fuck, what if it was one of those academic movies with subtitles? Just thinking about it made my dick shrivel.

Lmao

We scrolled and scrolled until we finally settled on The Photograph. I hadn’t seen it yet but from what I’d heard, the soundtrack was flames. And Skye said she’d seen the first half but didn’t get to finish. I wondered if that meant something.

I’ve never been one of those men who grumble about not getting enough sex. The jokes about how you’re only supposed to get married when you’re ready to give up getting pussy never really landed for me. I’m not an animal; I can hear the word ‘no’ and not take it as a personal affront or a threat to my manhood. Sometimes my wife was tired. Sometimes she had a headache for real. And sometimes she just didn’t wanna fuck. I could handle that just fine. My goal has always been to make her life easy no matter how I felt.