Page 88 of Tell Me I'm Not Dreaming
“There was Miriam. Her husband was cheating on her, and she found out. She left him and was staying with a friend when her friend suggested that she experience sex with a man who could actually make her come.”
“I agree with her friend. Did you have sex with the friend, too?” Suchi takes a napkin and wipes her hands before putting it in the empty ice cream bowl.
“No. Her friend and I never had sex, but the friend did watch me while I fucked another client during a swingers party Sylvia held at the house.”
“Wow, the things you must have seen.”
“Baby, you don’t know the half of it. I’ve seen die-hard white conservatives in leather chaps begging for Black dick.”
“Did they ever approach you?”
“All the time. And I turned them down every time. One wanted to watch me jerk off and promised not to touch me. I didn’t care. They were fucking hypocrites.”
“Good for you. How did your first meetings with clients go?”
“It would depend on the client. For example, with Miriam, she and I just talked for the first three months whenever she came to see me. Then, after a while, she asked if I could hold her. That led to lying in bed while I held her. Then lying in bed naked while I held her, then sex. And no, I never engaged in race play with anyone.”
“Good, that would have been a dealbreaker. So, Miriam was a regular client. Did you have other regulars? Also, how long did you do sex work?”
“I had about ten others, but not at the same time—and I performed sex work for five years. A large number of clients were one-timers.”
“Is there a client, besides Miriam, that you remember most?”
Suchi sees Kofi’s smile dim. He sighs.
“Yeah, there’s two of them. First was Alyssa. A doctor found a tumor in her brain and gave her six months. Her friends brought her to Sylvia’s. One of them was a client of my boy Javon’s. Alyssa only came to see me once, but she was very appreciative of how I treated her. Her friends took her on a trip around the world. She sent me a couple of postcards.” Kofi looks down. “She died eight months later. She was buried in the last place they visited, Italy.”
“And the other?”
He gives a small smile as a little bit of the light returns to his eyes.
“The other was a brother named Bryan. He was divorced and newly out the closet and had never been with a man. It was similar to Miriam. We talked and that evolved into other things. He eventually became more comfortable with me, and we started kissing then frotting. Then he decided he wanted to try giving head, then he wanted me to top him. He eventually moved to New York and met a nice man. He told me that my care helped him become comfortable with who he really was.”
“Would you call yourself bisexual?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve only wanted to pursue romantic relationships with women, but I am sexually fluid.”
“It’s interesting how many of us don’t want to admit that.”
“It makes sense. There’s a lot of fear in what folks don’t understand.”
He gazes warmly into Suchi’s eyes.
It’s crazy how saving your virtue is considered by many to be a sign of a good person.Those folks would call Kofi everything but a child of God due to his past.And yet, this man has the purest soul of any man I have ever met.
“All of them meant something to you.”
He nods. “I remember Miriam once told me that I made her feel wanted, and she hadn’t felt that way in a long time.”
“That’s really beautiful. Far too many people see sex work as a negative when it can really benefit people.”
“That’s why I’m not ashamed of my past. The majority of my clients, at one point, had people in their lives that were constantly disappointing them. I wasn’t going to be another one. I made each one of them feel cherished because that’s how I saw them. I saw the beauty that others refused to see.”
They gaze at each other for what feels like forever, when Kofi says, “I know how important your girls are to you, so you can talk to them about this if you would like.”
“Thank you. Aimee’s going to have tons of questions.”
They share a hearty laugh.
