Beg Me (19 page)

The Nubian princes all stood and discarded their robes, and without any prompting the women undressed too, each one kneeling slightly behind the nearest man. I copied the girls, finding myself by the side of a tall young guy named Anwar. Each girl coiled an arm around the leg of her man, loyally, proudly, submissively. The atmosphere was eerie, with its peculiar warmongering mixed with eroticism.

And I’m not kidding—some of the guys stood there, and I saw their cocks lifting with the start of erections, no self-consciousness about this happening in front of the other males. I checked the faces of the girls. They were similarly turned on. Isaac hadn’t just touched a nerve of pride. He had summoned something that must have been at the core of everyone’s collective consciousness. Race didn’t enter into it. It was an unnamed ancient drive, battle lust equals lust equals worship equals…what?

And at the front our leader stood there, the only man still robed. Danielle was at his feet, holding his leg submissively like the other girls, nude. Her eyes didn’t stay on him, though. She looked at us, watched the devotees. Carefully.

Later that night, I heard the crack of leather, the whine of pulleys and strained ropes. Moans mixing in an accidental chorus.

In his speeches (yeah, there were more speeches, plenty of them), Isaac kept hammering the idea that the enemy was white men and Asian men—these were the ones who didn’t want to mix with us, who felt threatened by black cock, black sexuality, black exuberance. White men who wouldn’t let our princes into the boardroom and who thought our women were
strident.
Asians who didn’t want us in their grocery stores or even in their districts.

Of the two enemies, the Asians were worse, he argued, because their attacks went largely unnoticed. White men went through the show of justifying themselves in positions of power to Latinos, even to Asians who “claimed” (Isaac’s quotes, not mine) that they were disenfranchised. Meanwhile, Asians took over the West Coast, growing in numbers, embedding themselves, forcing everyone to deal in their language. (As if they had only one? Another conspiracy?)

I was a little mystified by his bigotry. Asian men were the bigger enemy, but as he said, second-generation Asian girls were welcome, the “Westernized” safe Asian girls. From a tactical perspective, maybe he thought this preaching would go over better with the choir. Certainly most of us could cite an example where we came face to face with the raw bigotry of an Asian person, but in my book, there’s no “hierarchy” of racism. An Asian guy in a shop treating me rudely isn’t worse or better than the white estate agent who tells me that the house I want isn’t available. I can do without them both.

My brother likes to say London drives him crazy because you’re never quite sure what’s going on, whereas in America you know where you stand.

But I know my brother doesn’t think every Asian guy’s out to get him, or every white guy either.

Isaac, however…

My father used to say people hate what they are or they hate what’s completely alien to them.

Danielle, if I’d been right about her from Sharett’s description, had been in Nigeria checking on the heroin trade. Real hypocrisy if Isaac and Danielle were buying dope from Asians to sell in the States.

I mulled over Danielle. That woman sure knew how to balance. Here she was surrounded by black girls, a couple of Asian girls, one Indian girl, three white girls, but my radar didn’t pick up any vibe of resentment in the group over Danielle’s color and what it might imply for Big Daddy High Priest. She had managed to navigate
those
politics.

I found out how well when I strayed into an attic studio on the second floor that happened to look out over one of the rear bedrooms. There was a sizable skylight in Gordon’s room. I saw them, but they didn’t see me.

Below was Danielle, her green eyes wild, her pale body with a slight sheen of perspiration, kissing Gordon frantically as he lay on his back. Her small fist gripped his cock, and I caught sight of her tongue flicking out, desperate for his mouth, his hands playing with her dangling breasts. She cried out suddenly, her white fingers tracing his toned build. She’d cried out because Trey was ramming his thick dark girth hard inside her.

I watched the quiver of her white buttocks with the momentum. I watched her eyes shut to slits, and her lovely mouth open, her hair flying back like an ocean wave. She said something I couldn’t hear.

Gordon moved, and she took his place on his bed, rolling onto her back. Trey’s cock was back inside her with savage force, and I watched his penis slam inside her again and again, Danielle’s anxious fingers straying past her wedge of black fur, playing with her clitoris.

Gordon put his penis in her mouth.

She sucked him for a long moment, and then he broke away, trying to hold back his climax. She smiled at him and then looked with glassy eyes at Trey. I couldn’t see his face. Gordon, his long thin cock still powerfully hard, sighed and laid down next to her, kissing her, fondling her, and she began jerking him again.

I watched from above, fascinated, envious. It was Trey who came first, grunting as if his orgasm was an expression of rage, and then Danielle let herself go, convulsing and shuddering with an out-and-out wild scream, Gordon spilling himself all over her, which only excited her more.

They lay, the three of them, for ten minutes.

And then she got them up again, both of them. Insatiable.

I watched, rocking on my knees, and then I had to find a corner in the room where I could make myself come. I imagined Gordon and Trey with me. I imagined them both playing with me as my wrists were bound in leather cuffs.

Naturally, it wasn’t all meditation, spanking paddles, and free love. Everybody had work to do. But it was hard to tell how much was genuine and how much was “busy work.”

Some was legit, of course. Hey, I’m a city girl, but even I can understand that a farm needs steady care. I’d look out the windows and see princes and princesses in their “work robes” toting this or that bale, feeding animals in pens. It got my heart beating a little faster when I spotted a hunk of a prince stripped to the waist, his brown skin chiseled in the sun as he wiped his brow and then went back to pulling weeds.

The kitchen was my favorite place, and meal preparation never felt like labor. It was one honking big mansion, so everybody pitched in for cleaning, even Isaac and Danielle. I took this as a public-relations ploy, all “monastic humility,” etc. They were with the Little People, yet still removed.

The office work was the puzzle. In the great library, I put in shifts researching and cross-referencing ancient African civilizations. I got this gig because it was what my master’s in history was supposed to be in (and wouldn’t my poor, scandalized dad have had a fit over that one, since I never earned my degree and had dropped out of college). Danielle claimed all my findings would help with book manuscripts that were being prepared to at last “spread the teachings” of the sarcophacan temple. Gordon was supposed to be the author of the first book.

“Not Isaac?” I asked.

She laughed. “Isaac doesn’t want this project to become about him! It’s what we believe that counts. It’s the temple. Besides, he’s thinking for the future. Gordon will author a volume, Trey will do another, and so on.”

Clever, clever, I thought. Don’t commit anything to paper under Isaac’s name, and nobody can scrutinize his teachings. I wondered if these volumes would ever see the light of day.

It was almost like Danielle and Isaac had studied the downfall of every cult organization to avoid the pitfalls. Nothing written down, so no easy reference to check contradictions. I hadn’t finished my digging on their finances, but it was a sure bet they paid the taxes on their
legal
income. No children here, not one tyke in sight—so no allegations of abuse or inappropriate exposure to a sexualized environment. And I hadn’t seen any drugs used here. Wine, sure, but no hard liquor. Tactically, they were brilliant.

As the days passed, I often saw Violet seated at a desk in the main foyer with her bare legs swinging free, a kid on a river dock, staring at a chalky blackboard full of equations I couldn’t understand. I was conflicted. On one hand, she was in heaven, I bet. On the other, I could tell they had her spinning her wheels over something they didn’t need at all.

I had to figure out what was really going on.

“How are you doing, girl?” Isaac’s voice—soft, paternal.

We sat opposite each other on mats on the floor in his “office”—a modest room where incense burned and candles flickered. There was a computer on a desk and a pristine green blotter that looked like nothing had rested on it in ages. The room was decorated in African art, and I saw a wooden mask of an Igbo water spirit and another Igbo pattern of a funerary stone on a framed block of wood on the wall. Coincidence? But there was a Kamba stool off in the corner, and on the desk was a Kongo soapstone sculpture.

I was here because Isaac conducted “interviews,” as he called them, every week or two weeks with devotees. He helped them in their spiritual training, supposedly guiding them as they wrestled with an issue or the occasional personality conflict. Who knows what he did with some of them behind the closed door while the rest of us meditated? I only know what happened with me.

“You like it here, Teresa?” he asked now. “Are you happy with us?”

“Oh, very much,” I gushed. “I think I’m fitting in—am I fitting in? If I’m doing anything wrong, please tell me so I can—”

“I’ve heard no complaints,” he laughed. “What’s troubling you, sister?”

“Nothing. I’m fine. Really…”

“Everything is confidential in this room, Teresa. And besides—we’re family.”

“I feel guilty, Isaac.”

“Why?”

“Well…I want to pull my weight around here. I’m doing research, but maybe I could be doing more. We live so well, and it must be expensive even with the food from the farm—”

“Teresa, Teresa,” he purred. “That’s all taken care of, and it’s nothing for you to worry about. Each devotee graduates to higher levels of responsibility when we determine the person is ready. I know what this is, honey, I’ve seen it before. It’s guilt over our affluence…. We know how our brothers and sisters out there suffer. But listen, we have
earned
our success, and we will raise them up as our movement spreads. And in time, all will be shown to you, when you have proved your maturing in our practice.”

“I do want to prove myself to you,” I said, and took his hand in both of mine. I lifted it to my lips and kissed it.

“I know you will, Teresa.”

He stroked my hair and my cheek for a second, and then his hand slid down to rest on my breast. Our eyes locked. I was conscious of both of us breathing a little faster. With delicate care, his fingers slipped and pulled back the folds of cotton until he had my brown flesh exposed, gently squeezing and fondling the nipple, tracing the circle of my areola. The moment went on, neither of us pushing things forward, and then, just as I was about to lean in to kiss him—

“You should return to meditation now,” he told me. “Please nod to Trey and tell him to come in.”