Page 3 of Smoke N' Stroke

Dr. Jackson’s clients knew she wouldn’t approve of them smelling like weed, so they probably lit up after they left the sessions. I wanted to point that out but thought better of it. I’d rather her think her methodologies were somehow better and that listening to calming music and saying affirmations were all that was needed to heal.“Weed is from the earth. It was put here for you and me.” A wise man said that in the movieFridayand Smokey was right. Weed had medicinal properties whether smoked,vaped, consumed, or slathered all over the body. Weed was weed.

“Dr. Jackson to you, Dr. Booker.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Despite her snooty attitude when it came to marijuana, I’d still been looking forward to seeing her fat ass jiggle around the building today, but she’d been in sessions all morning. The huge pink tumbler cup with an apple green lid she had clutched in her hand told me she’d just filled it up with the spring water provided in the break room. She had gotten her nails done recently. They were a shade of soft pink that I would have associated with innocence. Nala was far from that despite the front she tried to put on with everyone else.

“That’s not how to talk to your colleague is it?” Her words were spoken through tight teeth. I smiled with pleasure knowing I could incite some reaction from her. It might not be the one I wanted right now but that would come.

“Was I your colleague last month, Dr. Jackson, or are we still acting like that didn’t happen?”

Her throat bobbed and she looked down at her cup with embarrassment.

That’s right! Settle the fuck down.

She collected herself and shook her head.

“Low blow, Dr. Booker.”

“Not as low as I want to go, Dr. Jackson, but since this is how you want it, I’m going back to what pays me.”

Her thick bouncy curls moved around her face as she shook her head in irritation before finally retreating into her office the way I knew she would.

Any mention of that late evening in the supply closet made her clam up tighter than her wet pussy and it was deliciously tight from what I could remember. The memory of pushing my fingers into her juicy flesh almost made me bum rush her into her office and beg for her to let me get some more but I had my pride after all. After the moment was gone and I finished sucking her sweet stickiness from my fingers, her senses came back to her I guess, and she decided all that shit she was talking about me being her fantasy, she didn’t want it anymore.

I would never pressure her or any woman for that matter, but I hated that we had to go back to pretending that I didn’t hear her whisper my name as I finished eating up her fat lips. That was some bullshit if you ask me. Just thinking about the taste of her on my tongue and the smell of pussy clinging to my beard on the way home that night, now hadme stiff but I had a patient coming in twenty minutes which meant I needed to calm down and finish out my notes from my session with Monique. I needed to have a clear mind for Tabitha.

One of the challenging things about providing therapy that many therapists were beginning to speak up about is our need to deflate and have someone to talk to after listening to the issues plaguing our patients. It was nearly impossible to stay objective and unmoved after learning some of the reasons why people struggled with life and the human condition. Given I knew about the ways we go on to cope with pain and disorder, and some of those things being unhealthy, I made it my business to talk to someone outside of the clinic at least once a month to make sure I got out all the heaviness placed into my spirit. This brought me to one of the patients I’d been seeing since Dr. Patton opened this clinic in this community.

Tabitha’s issues were heavy, so heavy that I intentionally scheduled her to be the last session of the day so that I would have time to deflate before going home. I tried my best not to bring the terrors that my patients experienced home when I walked into my door. Sometimes it was inevitable, and I had to deal, but if I could help it, I would and that wasn’talways easy because they’d been through unspeakable things. Maybe that’s why I learned to be more patient with people, including Nala, because each person had a story and some of those stories could be filed under the thriller or horror genres. Those people had to overcome so much just to be able to sit in front of me and ask for help. Either way, it sometimes kept me up at night wondering about this world and why the people in it, seemed determined to hurt others, and then it made me reflect on some of my flaws and then I understood the cycle is just that hurt people hurt people until they heal and decide to heal people.

This is why Higher Pathways was created and opened here in the Homewood section of Pittsburgh. Dr. Patton felt that the people in the communities that were most underserved needed the most healing so when she received the grant to leave private practice where she made a shitload of money, she made it her mission to create a space that was about giving more, than it was about taking.

Last year, I was working in a local mental health hospital and found some of the methods of treatment boring, stiff, and not culturally sensitive if I was being truthful. Scrolling through Twitter, nowknown by the alphabet letter, I saw a video of a man recording a little bit of his music therapy session. Loud up-tempo and rhythmic music played while he swayed and bounced to the beat. He talked about how the two sessions with drums and the keyboard had pulled him out of a deep depression. His words slowed as his throat tightened with emotion. He spoke about how at the clinic, they accepted what little money he could spare and didn’t look down at him. His therapist, a dark-skinned woman with starter locs and cowrie shell jewelry adorning her ears and neck smiled and waved into the camera.

The next day I came in to see if more specialists were needed. Dr. Patton told me all her masters-level clinician spots were filled but she needed a few doctorate-level clinicians to provide supervision over the departments. I told her I’d just received my doctorate in Psychology the previous spring after already having had my master’s in counseling and my certifications in sex therapy along with four years of work in the field. Her smile spread across her mildly barely aging brown face. I ignored the resemblance she had to my mother and focused on the opportunity in front of me while I waited to hear if I got the job.

She hired me the following week after thebackground checks came back and the rest was history. I loved my time here and made long-lasting relationships with my colleagues, and most especially Dr. Patton. That was until four months ago when Nala Jackson came to work here to fill an opening left by Minnie Flagger, the Cognitive therapist who moved to California with her husband not long after she started. Unlike Minnie, whom I got along with well during her short time, Nala, was the only person in the building who could care less how wonderful I was. She seemed to resist everything about me except that one time.

2

NALA

Have you ever met a man who sets your soul on fire … and you also happen to hate him? Yes, no, maybe? Well for me, that man was Zaire Booker. I couldn’t stand his guts and yet I craved feeling his large hands roaming on my body nearly every moment of every day. Again.

And he knew it.

That’s probably what pissed me off more than me wanting him—it was that he knew. He knew because he had had me already, even if it was only a little bit. He knew because I couldn’t hide it no matter how hard I tried. He knew it because I wanted him to know. Yes, I said it. Denying it would only be a lieand lies serve no good purpose but to confuse ourselves and I was confused enough already. God, I wanted this man.Again.And he wanted me too. He never hid that. Didn’t try to, either. But I couldn’t stand him.

I’d been as equally turned onto him, and turned off from the moment I met him in graduate school. He had a reputation across campus, and it wasn’t for being a heaux or anything although I never got into his business to know if that was the case or not. I wasn’t nosey enough to ask questions but the women I was in classes with spent a lot of time talking about Zaire. Most of the whispers about him were about his good looks and the wish of wanting to get with him though he seemed unattainable.

However, some of that could be explained. From what I now know, Zaire was taking care of his younger brother and sister due to his mom passing away when he was an undergrad. As a result, he worked full time, went to school practically full time, and whatever available time he had, he spent looking after them. He shared some of his background during my new hire orientation at Higher Pathways where he’d already been working for over six months and I considered maybe I had himpegged wrong when I knew him back then. His situation of being a young man forced to grow up and take care of his siblings made the only other new hire, and future childcare worker, Sheena, moon-eyed over him.

Me too, if we are keeping it one hundred, but I had some dignity at least and knew how to pretend like he wasn’t fine as hell and that I didn’t notice his big ass hands and feet. If you know, you know, that the myth ismostlytrue. God wouldn’t give a man a hand too small to grab his wood, now would he? But none of that mattered because I was playing it cool. He was not going to know that I only found him more appealing than those years before especially since I could never say I liked him. He was built like a god, with dark brown skin and eyes even darker that could drink you in with a stare. Was his voice a deep baritone coated in molasses that could probably talk you through an orgasm without even a swivel of his hips? Yes, and yes.

But I reminded myself that when I saw him around campus, I didn’t like him. Not knowing him didn’t matter because back then I disliked him simply because he reminded me of boyfriends in the past who were too slick and convincing for theirown good. Now I hated him because he reminded me of a recent boyfriend that I wished to hell.

Zaire was everything I said I wouldn’t give into anymore—not after Eric and his philandering ways and community dick. Not to mention, Eric had a growing weed-smoking addiction that gave him stinky breath that would turn my stomach whenever he leaned in to kiss me. Anyway, men like Zaire wouldn’t see the problem in freely loving multiple women. Nope. Because Zairewasfreedom. It didn’t take my education degrees hung on the wall behind me to help me figure out he would only break my already hardened heart.

---