Insanity (11 page)

“Did you just hear your roommate come in?” he asked her quietly.

“Fuck
herrr
,” Queen moaned, continuing to enjoy herself.

Bryant chuckled, dripping with excitement. He asked her, “Does it feel that good?”

She reached out and grabbed his head into her breasts.

“Try it. Drive downtown, baby. Take me downtown.”

What the hell,
Bryant thought to himself.
I can’t let her freak herself out on her own. Shit!

He slowly stuck out his tongue at the tip and began to lick around the nipples of her erect titties, gathering them into his hands to cup them to his mouth.

Queen quieted her moaning to check for his tongue skills. His twisting, lollipop licks were impressive.

Oh shit, I wasn’t expecting that,
she had to admit.

He then slid his tongue below her breasts and tickled her rib cage.

Queen closed her eyes in silent anticipation.

Bryant worked his tongue over and down her side, sending more tickling sensations up her spine and to her mind, where her moans of pleasure became real.

“Oooooh,” she let out softly. “Low-wer.”

He traced a path with his tongue to her waistline.

Damn it! Is he sure he doesn’t know what he’s doing? I know he better not fucking stop!
she told herself.

Where she may have taken a more experienced lover for granted, Bryant’s alleged inexperienced forced her to pay more attention to his every move. The uncertainty drove her excitement and made her more anxious, especially when Bryant slid his descending tongue into the crease of her left leg.

Motherfucker, if you don’t eat this pussy while you’re down there . . .! Just a little bit to the right,
she mentally guided him.

She was
trembling
he was teasing her so badly. But she fought to keep her hands off of him. It was more exciting to wonder what he’d do next, while she continued to clench the bed sheets in her balled fists.

Just a little bit more to the right. Just a little bit to the right. PLEEASSSEE!

Her body was so worked up, that when his tongue slid into the direction of her engorged clit and hit it, tears of joy squirted from her eyes and rolled toward her temples. But she forced herself to take it like a grown woman and not scare him away from her bliss in a panic. She just wanted him to
stay there
a little bit longer with his tongue . . . a little bit longer with his tongue . . . a little bit . . .
lonnng-gerrrrr
. . .

“OOOOOOOOHHHHHH!”

She shook, shimmered and locked her legs around his neck to stop him from escaping, just like she had imagined it. But the man never tried to free himself. He submitted between her legs, like carnivorous prey, and made her conquer all the more enjoyable.

The Tillis Family

July  1998

“S
o, I get to meet the whole family now, hunh?” Bryant asked Queen. He smiled, while driving his Mercedes at close to three o’clock on a sunny and warm afternoon.

Queen smiled back at him from the passenger seat.

“Then I get to meet
yours
?” she reminded him.

“Oh, you could have met my family a while ago if you weren’t trying to play dodge ball me,” Bryant told her.

Queen shook her head, still grinning. “Please don’t start up with that up again. It’s over with now.”

Both dressed in summer shorts and t-shirts, she had invited Bryant over to her family’s Fourth of July cook out at her Aunt Justina and Uncle Mario’s house on the northeast side of Baltimore. The McCutcheons were the wealthier side of the family, living more comfortably than the rest of Tillis clan on the west side, and Queen felt safer introducing him there.

Bryant dropped his grievance and moved on.

“So, how many aunts, uncles and cousins do you have?”

Queen thought about it. “Two aunts, one uncle, some in-laws, and ummm . . . seven cousins, plus three or four.”

Bryant looked confused. “Plus three or four? What are you talking about?”

“You know, cousins from your in-laws and stuff, who aren’t really your
blood
cousins, but you call them your cousins because you’ve been around them so long.”

“Oh, yeah, everybody has those.”

“But that’s just on my
mom’s
side of the family,” she told him. “I don’t really know my father’s side. I could have like, five more aunts and uncles and
twenty
cousins running around Baltimore. But what about
you
? How many aunts, uncles and cousins do you have?”

He shook his head. “My family’s a lot smaller than yours. I only have one aunt, one uncle and three cousins. My mom was an only child, and my father has one sister, so that’s it for me. I got one aunt and one uncle in-law.”

“Well, does your in-law have brothers and sisters?”

Bryant shrugged. “Yeah, but I haven’t been around them, so I don’t know them like that. But my family has a lot of close
friends
though,” he added. “Now, if you count all of our
friends
as family . . .”

Queen cut him off and said, “No, only
family
is family.”

When they arrived at her aunt’s house, the street parking was impossible.

“We’re gonna have to park and walk a couple of blocks to house. Unless you get lucky as someone’s pulling out of a spot,” Queen commented.

Bryant grinned. “That’s why it’s better to live out in the suburbs. You can park up on the damn lawn at my parent’s house, but not in brick-city Baltimore. And these little lawns they have here are small like flowerbeds.”

“Whatever,” Queen blew him off as she continued to look for parking.

The Baltimore neighborhood was filled with red-brick and gray-stoned row-houses. The small front lawns were split by cement walkways that extended down to the sidewalk. Visitors parked their cars wherever they could find an open spot on the one-way streets, while the residents used one-car garages in a small back driveway.

After rounding the block twice and not finding anywhere to park, Bryant finally settled for an open spot a block up at the corner.

Queen looked up at the NO PARKING sign to her right.

“Can you park here? It says No Parking.”

Bryant shrugged. “It’s the Fourth of July, girl, nobody’s writing parking tickets today. It’s not like we’re parked in front of a fire hydrant.”

Queen stared at him a second to make sure. “O-kaaay,” she hummed as a final warning.

As they walked the extra block back toward the house, Bryant asked her, “So, how are you planning to introduce me?”

“As Bryant Thompson.”

“That’s it?”

“What else you want me to say?”

He thought about it as they walked. “
Thee
Bryant Thompson.”

Queen grinned and said, “Please. And how do you plan to introduce
me
to
your
family?”

“Are you kidding me? You’re the
Queen
.”

She stopped walking and pictured the whole scene. “Oh my
God
. It’s times like those when I really
hate
my name. ‘No,
really
, what’s her name?’” she mocked.

Bryant broke up laughing. “Hey, that’s part of the deal of being special. And Queen Tillis is
extra
. But you’ve been living with it all your life, so you should be
used
to it by now.”

Once they made it to the house, some of Queen’s younger cousins were out on the front lawn and sidewalk.

“Ay, Queenie? Who he?” her young cousin Savannah asked of Bryant. She was fifteen and loaded with body. Her short white skirt and yellow t-shirt could barely contain it all. Even Bryant had to look.

Damn, this young girl is packing,
he noted.
She needs to give Queen some of that.

“Stop minding grown folks business, Vannah,” Queen told her without stopping.

“I was just asking who he
was
.”

At thirteen and much smaller than her, her little brother George laughed.

“Shut up, boy,” she told him with a shove.

As George tripped and fell to the grass, Sheila, an even younger cousin, laughed at that.

“Kids,” Queen commented.

She led Bryant up the cement steps and walkway toward the house, where another small flight of steps led to a glass storm door. They walked into a crowded living room of family members sitting and standing around clear plastic covered sofas and chairs. A deep maroon carpet covered the floor, and elephant sculpture lamps on glass stands surrounded the sofas. Against the far wall, a grainy bootleg DVD of Eddie Murphy’s
Dr. Dolittle
was playing on a giant screen TV.

Queen’s family was so into Eddie Murphy’s latest movie that no one noticed her and Bryant walked into the house; they were all too busy laughing.

Queen recognized the movie and frowned. “Who went and got a bootleg copy of
Dr. Dolittle
already? Bubby?”

“You know it,” her cousin Kenyatta confirmed. Three years younger than Queen, in a red t-shirt and black jeans, she sat on the small sofa right next to them at the doorway with a plate of food in her hands. Her plate was filled with macaroni and cheese, potato salad, barbecue chicken, string beans, and a buttered biscuit. She had just gotten it before they walked in.

Her older brother, Big James Bubby, sat at the end of the
longer sofa on the other side of the room. A massive young man in sports gear, he smiled and nodded at Queen and her company, holding his own plate of food. A leg of barbecue chicken in his mouth kept him from speaking.

“Hey Queenie, take your friend and go on in there and get you something to eat,” her uncle Mario told her. In his early fifties, Mario had shaved off his hair for a shiny and smooth dome. He did it to stop from having to deal with balding. Wearing a mint green, summer Polo shirt, he sat next to oversized nephew with other relatives and family friends.

Queen grinned at him and made her way to the dining room, where the table was filled with food, drinks, paper plates, plastic cups, forks, knives and spoons. More relatives and family friends were there, loading up on their plates, including Queen’s young mother, Mercille.

“Well, it’s about
time
you got here,” her mother complained. “You’re always fashionably
late
.”

“You’re the one who named her
Queen
,” her older sister snapped. Like Uncle Mario, Queen’s Aunt Allison was in her early fifties, and wearing a short styled wig to deal with
her
hair issue. But her mother, Mercille, had just reached her early forties, and she had started to dye her hair jet black while continuing to straighten it.

Queen smiled at their usual sister bickering and stepped up to greet them both with hugs.

“And who is this?” her Aunt Allison asked, referring to Bryant.

Queen stepped back to make his introduction. “This is Bryant Bailey Thompson,” she told them. “And this is my mother Mercille and my Aunt Allison.”

“Nice to meet you,” Bryant greeted them.

Allison looked at Mercille and smirked. “Well, excuse
me
. Mr. Bryant Bailey
Thompson
. Well, that sounds
serious
.”

Queen hooked his arm in hers and squeezed it, grinning for confirmation. It
was
serious.

“He looks tall and
good
too,” Allison added. “I guess he just don’t know how
crazy
Queen is yet, hunh?”

Bryant forced a smile and a chuckle at the awkward statement.

Mercille shook her head and leapt to her daughter’s defense.

“My daughter’s no crazier than anybody else in here.”

Her defense didn’t sound much better, so Queen moved on to distance herself from both of them.

 “Anyway, let’s just get you some food.”

She grabbed several paper plates from the table and began to load them up for herself and Bryant.

“You know she can’t
cook
either, right?” her aunt continued.

Queen stopped what she was doing and said, “Aunt Allison,
please
. Mom . . .”

Mercille stepped in again to her daughter’s defense. “Allison, cut it out.”

“Cut what out? A man needs to
know
who he’s getting involved with.”

“Well, that’s why she brought him over here to meet us today. But you don’t need to
scare
the man to death with
lies
and carrying on,” Mercille told her.

“
Lies
? Who
lied
? Your daughter
is
crazy
,” Allison insisted. “She focus on things that nobody else focus on.”

Queen shook her head and finished making their plates before she led Bryant through the kitchen and onto an elevated deck outside. The wooden stood above the driveway, where they sat in a pair of black plastic picnic chairs.

“What was
that
all about?” Bryant teased. In a sick way, he thought it was all comical. Queen’s folks were as outspoken as she was.

She took a deep breath before answering him. “With my family, nobody really got an education, they all work regular jobs and stuff. So, with everything that I’m doing with school and whatnot, and the way I go after what I want, my aunt has
always
considered me crazy. And she always complains about how I can’t cook, especially if we’re all around
food
.”

Bryant laughed it off and began to eat. “You mean this stuff?”

Queen grinned. She told him, “Actually, my aunt started off by calling my
mom
crazy for doing so much for me, when she really couldn’t
afford
it.”

Bryant nodded with a mouthful. “But education at all costs is a
good
thing, right?” he mumbled.