Mama Black Widow (3 page)

I felt a familiar palpitating anxiety and confusion. I knew I had to be careful that I didn't wind up in a hotel bed beneath some strange brute bulling himself into me.

During that part of it, I'd be ecstatic. And even later, alone, I'd lie there popped dry—but still feeling marvelous with spastic orgasmic waves ripping deep inside me—like a woman.

Then the horror part would start. I'd remember the contemptuous look on the coldhearted fruit hustler's face as he patted my twenty dollar bill in his pocket. I had been so hungry for love and affection. He had performed with neither. Then he'd toss some inane con over his shoulder as he hurried away to the streets to snare another freakish sucker.

Each time I'd want to die as I lay there alone with the pungent slime oozing from me. I'd cry my heart out in the lonely darkness in remorse for the abuse, humiliation and shame of it all, and guilt that I had set the bitch inside me free.

I lit a cigar and went into the crowded bar. I took a stool near the front window and ordered a tall cool Tom Collins from the elderly black bartender. Several guys who knew me from childhood stopped and made small talk.

Two cigars and five Tom Collins later I felt better. My watch read 10
P.M.
, so I went to the phone booth at the end of the bar and called Dorcas. I told her I was starting out for the Southside.

I went through the bar bedlam to the sidewalk. A rib joint firing up its ovens belched eye-stinging gouts of smoke into the sky.

The night people were crawling Madison Street like maggots on a corpse. Thickly painted queers and whores, white, black and high yellow jiggled corrupt behinds inside loud minidresses. They leered dirty smiles at the shabby tricks prowling for an orgy for five bucks. Black pimps with brutish faces stalked the turf in long flashy cars.

I unlocked the Plymouth and started the grumbly motor. I leaned across the seat to lower the window on the sidewalk side. I heard urgent high heels. An instant later a seamed white face framed by a red wig thrust through the open window and grinned at me. It belonged to Lucy, an old queen friend of mine, in full drag. His voluptuous face was a debauched image of the world-famous comedienne's.

“Tilly, my gawd, it's simply creamy to see you,” he gurgled in a gritty contralto voice.

I said, “Hi, Lucy,” and opened the door.

He gracefully slid his wide hips into the seat and adjusted the hem of the tight gold lamé microdress cut high at his droopy thighs. He slit his large blue eyes and pouted his scarlet mouth in fake anger.

He said, “Tilly, I don't know why the hell I'm so glad to see you. You dropped out of circulation eons ago without so much as a hint to your friends. I supposed that you were shacked up with some utterly divine cock that you couldn't bear to risk sharing.

“Oh, which reminds me, Mike is back in town on his bare ass, but creamy and cute as always, and Gypsy was stomped to death by
that crazy, jealous Mexican of hers. I'm still slaving at Spiegel's mail-order house. And I'm shacked up with a living dream.”

I sat there thinking,
Mike is back! Mike is back!

I forgot I had told Dorcas I was on my way home. I scarcely heard Lucy as he chattered on and on bringing me up to date on the romances and happenings among the queers I had deserted.

In a mechanical daze I drove Lucy several blocks up Madison Street to an old apartment building. He begged me to come up for a moment to have a drink for old times' sake.

I followed him into a first-floor rear apartment reeking with sandalwood incense. An amber light shone from a pole lamp. The small living-room walls were aglow with Lucy's phosphorescent paintings of nude male figures.

He went across a burnt orange carpet to a yellow bar. I sat down on a yellow leather sofa. He brought a glass tray and put it on the yellow cocktail table in front of me.

He sat beside me and said, “See, Honey, I remembered your poison: gin and soda.”

We sat there sipping, chatting and listening to Ray Charles records for quite a while. Then Lucy dropped a red devil, so just to be a good sport, I dropped one, and I really started to feel groovy. I really did.

Lucy took my hand and led me into a pink and blue bedroom. She switched on a bed lamp. A coal-black young guy with gleaming processed hair was lying on his back beneath a satin quilt. He was fast asleep.

Lucy cocked his head, gazing raptly down at him. He said, “The poor baby is sleeping off a binge. Isn't he gorgeous?”

I said, “He's attractive all right, but don't you think he's awfully young and innocent? He couldn't be more than seventeen. His parents could make trouble for you.”

Lucy giggled and flung the covers back. He leaned over and pulled the boy's huge dick from between his sinewy thighs and
hefted it lovingly in his palm. The boy smiled in his sleep and scratched his belly.

Lucy said, “The goddamn creamy thing goes nearly twelve inches hard. It's so big, I'll soon be crapping in a washtub. He's the greatest lover I've ever had.

“There's no parental danger. He's got ten brothers and sisters, and no father that he remembers. His mother is happy he's found someplace to eat. In fact, I'm something of a good fairy, no pun intended. I take food and clothing to her often.”

Lucy went to the dresser and got a pink ribbon from a drawer. He tied it into a bow around the base of the boy's manhood, kissed it and pulled the covers up.

Lucy turned and said, “My gawd, we've been yakking, and I almost forgot Stel's birthday party. You remember Stel, the lesbian on Warren Boulevard?”

I looked at my watch and said, “I remember her. I can't forget her. I met Mike at her place. It's only midnight. If her parties are anything like they used to be things are getting groovy about now. Come on, I'll drop you off.”

Lucy smiled slyly and said, “The hell you say. You're going to get into some pretty clothes and go to that party. They wouldn't forgive me if I didn't bring you.”

She went to the closet. I stood there with my head in an euphoric whirl and watched her rummage for a dress for me.

I wanted to shout out, “Lucy, forget it. I'm not going to that faggot party.”

But I couldn't make the words come out. The pill and the alcohol and that bitch, Sally, were too powerful to resist. Incredibly, I vibrated at the prospect that I might see Mike again.

Thirty minutes later I had put on a padded bra and dressed. I stood wide-eyed and thrilled before the full-length mirror on the closet door. I was dazzling in the shimmery white silk microdress and blue-black wig that hung to my shoulders in Grecian curls.
My size-six feet were elegant in white satin squared-toe pumps with rhinestone buckles.

I stepped closer to the mirror. Lucy clipped mock pearl earrings to my earlobes. I gazed at my huge hazel eyes flashing emerald sparks beneath the curly canopies of dark auburn lashes.

Despite my age, my smooth yellow skin still stretched tautly over my high cheek-boned face. My full lips were curvy and glistening beneath pale pink lipstick. Golden freckles speckled my delicate tip-tilted nose. I was enchanted with my face. I really was. I guess I loved it so much because it was Papa's face in every detail.

Lucy said, “Tilly, I've said it before, and I'm saying it now. You are the creamiest thing in drag I've ever seen. Thousands of women in Chicago would froth at the mouth with joy if they had your legs and face and could wiggle inside a size ten dress the way you do.

“That round rear end of yours is so sexy a goddamn vice cop wouldn't wake up that you're not really a glamorous twenty-five-year-old broad. Take this mink stole, bag and gloves. Let me put a spot of perfume behind your ears. Now let's drop another pill and get the hell out of here.”

It was 1
A.M.
when we got to the street teeming with cars and people. Under the crazy hypnosis of pills and alcohol I had the strange feeling I was in a fantastic flower garden, hearing the hum and buzz of insects. Bright neon blossoms flashed, rippled and sparkled in the bewitched night.

One of a gang of young guys in a car at the curb shouted at Lucy as we passed. “Lucy, you know you can't handle cunt. Bring that beautiful bitch back here and let me sock this nine inches to her.”

I tossed my hips and giggled when I suddenly remembered that a killjoy I vaguely knew as Otis Tilson wasn't around to squelch my fun.

I felt positively beautiful. I was like an awed spectator watching myself reveling in the absolute surrender to the freak bitch, Sally.

I had to park half a block away from Stel's place because of the
string of cars bumper to bumper. Lucy and I stood on the porch of the fourteen-room house pressing the doorbell again and again. Finally we heard footsteps and someone opened the peephole. The door swung open, and we stepped into a white-carpeted entrance hall.

Torchy, a young blond queen in a bloodred mini, said excitedly, “Lucy, Tilly, follow me. You're just in time for some sport. Stel's Penny was out with some stud since yesterday morning. She came home fifteen minutes ago, stoned out of her mind with a raunchy cunt. Stel is furious. Everybody's in the barroom catching the scene.”

We followed Torchy down a flight of rear stairs to the barroom that had once been a basement. It was the Mecca for many of the Westside black and white queers. It was spacious and had all of the fixtures and geegaws of a commercial bar.

About forty laughing people, black and white, encircled an attraction of some kind at the rear of the room. I heard muffled screams. We went over. Lucy tiptoed and peered down at whatever it was and started laughing.

I couldn't see a thing on my tiptoes, so I half turned to spot a chair or something to add to my five feet two so I could see the action.

I felt a sudden viselike pressure around my waist, and then I was airborne. I looked down at a gorilla face crinkly in amusement. My hundred and twenty pounds were perched neatly on the ridge of the widest shoulder I'd ever seen. The black giant had his paws locked around my calves balancing me like I was a baby.

I said angrily, “What the hell are you doing? Put me down.”

He flung back his shiny shaved skull against my thigh and laughed.

He said, “Baby, I ain't going to let you fall. Go on and dig the happenings.”

I looked down into his brown eyes. They were so warm and nice and that face of his was so pathetically ugly I just had to be kind to him. I smiled and put my arm around his bull neck.

I looked down at struggling brown-skinned Penny, her eyes bucked in panic. Two brawny white lesbians were holding her down while Stel shoved ice cubes up Penny's guilty tang. It was almost poetic punishment for a hot delinquent pussy.

I swung my eyes away and scanned the crowd for Mike. He wasn't there. Shortly, the excitement was over and chastened Penny slunk upstairs. Gargantua lowered me to the floor and grinned down at me.

I said, “Thanks for the trip.”

He said, “My name is Lovell, but everybody calls me Big Lovee. Who are you?”

“I'm Tilly, and it's a pleasure to meet you,” I said and turned and walked away to Lucy sitting at the bar.

Stel went behind the long redwood bar to serve her guests. I sat at the bar sipping Tom Collins and chatting with Stel and Lucy. At least twenty people came over to say hello and how glad they were to see me again. Lovee sat at the end of the bar gazing hungrily at me.

Lesbians and their women were paired off and in small groups with queens and studs in the shadowy booths lining the long room. The scene was swept by a romantic pinwheel of colored bulbs revolving slowly in the low ceiling.

The hubbub of their chatter and wild laughter almost smothered the souling of Lou Rawls moaning from a jukebox that blazed in the corner like a pastel bonfire.

I felt cozy and intoxicated, but not only because of the pills and drinks I had taken. There was somehow a sweet and wonderful atmosphere of equality and brotherhood among queers. I guess they were so despised and discriminated against in the straight world that in mutual anguish and suffering they found emotional sanctuary among themselves.

At 3
A.M.
Lucy and I helped Stel serve chitterlings with spaghetti and coleslaw. It wasn't my favorite dish. While growing up I had eaten enough hog guts to stretch from coast to coast.

I danced with Lovell and several other guys. I was having a ball, and poor Lovell had his nose wide open for me. He sat and glowered at me when I wasn't in his arms. When I was, I felt his hard thing prod my navel.

Around 4
A.M.
people started to drift away to the street and to the bedrooms upstairs. I went to the john at the top of the stairs to tinkle. I pulled down the borrowed satin panties and sat down because it was easier with a dress on.

The john door opened, and there was Lovell half swacked with a ravenous look of adoration on his ape face. The musical fall of the tinkle must have been a powerful turn-on for the ugly brute, because he fell to his knees in front of me and started kissing and licking my kneecaps and thighs.

It tickled good. But there was no lock on the door and I was afraid someone might walk in. I giggled and tried to shove his head away.

He blurted out a whiney plea, “Tilly, please give me a chance. I'm black and ugly, pretty baby, but I got a boss head and a groovy dick. All my life I ain't loved nothing but sissies, and you the finest one I ever saw.

“I ain't jiving you, Tilly. I'm a poor boy, but a good boy, a long way from home, so lonesome and needing someone to love. Now scoot up, angel, and let Big Lovee send you to heaven.”

It was all so sudden, inconvenient and awkward that I couldn't let myself go. I stood up quickly and pulled up my panties.

I flushed the john and said in a gentle voice while washing my hands, “Lovee, maybe later. Please try to understand. I'm not in the mood right now. I've got nothing against . . .”

His sobbing cut me off. I glanced in the mirror. The big ape's fat lips were quivering and tears rolled down his cheeks. I turned and faced him. I felt so sorry for him because his eyes were so piteous and he was so black and ugly standing there crying like a baby.