The Punany Experience Page 7

  Keith laughed as Korea rapped over $hort’s voice. Keith nearly butted the car in front of him, trying to watch her sexy lips move. But Korea didn’t notice; her eyes were closed, and she was in the trance of the hottest rap bass line to hit the scene since the Sugar Hill Gang put poetry to a commercial beat.

  The faster the car moved…the more wind in her face, the better Korea felt. Perhaps it was the clean air and the ride. Or perhaps, she thought, it was just the knowing; the kind of knowing one cannot be taught, the thing the old folks called wisdom. In the fifteen minutes it took to cross the bay, the truth became more apparent than ever before. It was more like a revelation teaching her that leaving the squalor of her urban village would release her to an alternative future with endless possibilities. She became certain that evening that she would have money someday.

  The song ended. Her eyes were open now, as they crossed over Treasure Island.

  “Is this an island?” she asked, looking at him with amazement.

  Korea had beautiful cat eyes that burned through Keith. He could feel Korea’s spirit rise and blow through him like tiny granules of heat, lost in the wind. He had felt this way many times before, taking young girls who were on the brink of womanhood to the big city, where he used to keep a small stable of those who opted not to go home when the night was through. It used to be easy for him to impress them. He was younger and more energetic and was just as excited as they were about the possibilities of the game. Now he was thirty years old, with only one lady remaining. Korea was the freshness he needed to get his game back on point. But she was sharp. He was going to have to lock her in quick.

  “Yes, it’s an island. It’s called Treasure Island. The bridge runs right through it. San Francisco is on the other side,” he told her, smiling at her like Billy Dee Williams smiled at Diana Ross in Lady Sings the Blues.

  Korea laughed at herself for blushing the way that she was. She had made it all these years through high school, while her classmates fell off, one after the other, losing their virginity to losers, getting pregnant, and dropping out of school. Besides getting her pussy fingered a few times, she had managed to save herself. Here she was with this dude, she only knew through his own distorted testament to himself over a few weeks of phone calls, wondering if she should fuck him tonight. Something in his smile made her want to. In it was a smooth confidence she had never seen before in any boy her age. She loved his smile. It was radiant. It almost seemed practiced.

  Korea let out a sound, something like a moan, as the topless car approached the sparkling skyline of San Francisco, feeling her pussy getting hot and wet.

  “Have you been to the city before?” Keith asked.

  “Which city?” Korea asked.

  “This one,” he said, exiting the freeway at Embarcadero. “San Francisco. That’s what they call San Francisco; the City.”

  “Oh, like Oakland’s not a city. I see,” Korea said sarcastically. Then, looking up at the tallest buildings she had ever seen, she admitted, “Compared to San Francisco, Oakland is just a town. No. I’ve never been to San Francisco before tonight,” she admitted, unembarrassed.

  Keith drove through the crowded streets for a few minutes, and then into a parking garage. When the car stopped, Korea let herself out.

  “Damn, you can’t wait for a brother to open your door?” Keith asked her.

  “Why would I do that? I have two hands,” she replied. Keith and Korea walked through a courtyard and up to the door of a club. “Keith, I can’t get into a nightclub. I don’t have ID.”

  “It’s cool. I got this; just chill out,” he told her.

  “Hey, Mo,” Keith said to the host at the door of The Punch Line comedy club.

  “Aye, blood, what’s up?” a skinny, buck-toothed man asked, while slowly looking Korea up and down. “Hey, Miss Thing,” he addressed her. He reached out to shake Keith’s hand and let him slide a twenty into his. “Don’t sit in the front,” Mo advised. “The comedian performing tonight is a crazy bitch that loves to clown. If you sit too close, she’ll make your little girlfriend cry.”

  Korea’s different, Keith thought, as he watched her laugh at the most tasteless jokes and eat without self-consciousness. She didn’t talk too much, and when she did, it was about something that actually interested him; cars, sports, her love for dogs.

  “My mom would never let me get a dog,” Korea complained. “She says someone might steal it.” She finished her last chicken wing and licked hot wing sauce from her fingertips before picking up her napkin.

  “She’s probably right. What kind of dog do you want?” Keith asked her.

  “A pit bull.”

  “Damn, girl! Yeah, your mom’s right. You wouldn’t be able to hold on to a pit for long. Not in your neighborhood.”

  “Oh, don’t trip,” Korea said, with more confidence than defense in her voice. “I won’t be in the 69 Village forever. I graduate at seventeen, and then I’m out. You can place a wager on it. Just because I was born in the ghetto doesn’t mean the ghetto lives in me.”

  Keith liked her more and more. “Don’t eat too much,” he said. “I made dinner reservations.”

  “Okay,” Korea said, turning her attention again to the stage to watch the conclusion of the show.

  “The show was funny, don’t you think?” Keith asked, helping her with her coat.

  “Yeah, it was fly,” she said coolly. Keith reached for Korea’s hand as they left the comedy club. “Oh, that’s real sweet,” she said into the night air, not looking at him. “I’m not trying to clown or anything, but I’m not into public displays of affection.”

  “Oh. No problem,” he said, a little embarrassed.

  “So, where are we going for dinner?”

  “The Equinox.”

  “Is it like Sizzler? I like Sizzler. My mom took me there last year, after we won the championship game.”

  Keith chuckled, and relaxed back into his manhood. “No, baby girl, it’s nothing like Sizzler. But you’ll like it.”

  “Just as long as the food is good; I’m starving.”

  “You have a healthy appetite.”

  “I have to. I’m a star athlete,” Korea said, doing a little dance and tossing an imaginary ball into the chilly night.

  If dinner went as well as Keith expected, he would be getting a room, so Korea could show him how athletic she really was. So he had made reservations at a rotating restaurant that sat atop a nice hotel.

  Keith’s chest was puffed out as he walked the young woman into the hotel lobby.

  They stepped into a glass elevator and shot at a speed of 500 feet per minute to the top floor, where the Equinox restaurant spun 360 degrees, unveiling one of the finest views of San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area. It was breathtaking.

  Korea devoured a tiny, juicy cut of filet mignon, sautéed vegetables, and a slice of cake, and listened to Keith lay down his pedigree for forty-five minutes. He was talking about how some guy had taken his money to put him on the list to get in the longshoreman union, and disappeared with it. “But I got in anyway. There is nothing tastier than a bite of revenge,” he was saying when he realized Korea wasn’t listening to him. She was kind of staring at his mouth. “Would you like some wine?”

  “I don’t need any wine. And you don’t need to keep talking and spending all your money. Though, your lips do look good when they move. Tell me what you want, and I’ll tell you if you can have it.”

  “Oh?” Keith stammered, suddenly feeling like he had lost the upper hand again.

  “What’s wrong?” Korea asked, relishing in his obvious discomfort.

  “Nothing, I.…”

  “Umm-hmm. Pussy got your tongue.” Korea lifted her foot under the table and pushed her foot into his crotch. “You didn’t pick this fancy spot because it spins. That’s a hotel downstairs, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So, did you get us a room?”

  Keith waved his hand in the air to call for the check. “Is i
t cool for you to stay out?”

  “Have me back by five in the morning. My mom gets up for work at six.”

  KEITH WASN’T A SPECTACULAR LOVER, but his dick was small enough and his stroke was gentle enough to make giving up her virginity painless.

  He snored softly in the aftermath. She stood in the hotel room window, looking down a million miles, to the San Francisco streets beneath her. Her hand slipped naturally down to her pussy.

  “How are you doing?” she asked, tapping lightly around her hole. It stung a little but, to her surprise, there was no blood. “Damn, this dude is hella weak. I didn’t even bleed.” She looked back at him, and then at the bridge. “But I could get used to this lifestyle.”

  CHAPTER 5:

  A BITE OF REVENGE

  The memory of Korea riding him had him hard already as he pulled up in front of her place.

  Korea pulled her T-shirt over her head and stepped into her boxers. The hallway to the bathroom was flooded with the sound of her mother’s snoring. First, she peed and then opened the medicine cabinet and looked for the peroxide. She grabbed it and a towel and went back to her bedroom where Whitney Houston was screaming about wanting to dance with somebody on KSOL through a small radio on her nightstand. She turned the volume up when she saw Keith’s car pull up. She turned her night light on, tipped the peroxide bottle to her lips, swished, and spit into the towel. She wiped her mouth and prayed he wasn’t having an outbreak as she peeked through the curtain and watched Keith get out of the car.

  With a cocky swagger, Keith approached the black bars that protected her window and tapped between them on the glass. Korea looked out of the window and saw Keith standing there. She slid the window open, and smiled devilishly. She was naked already, with her T-shirt pooled around her knees as she pressed her naked breasts into the cold metal and wedged her face between two bars. Reaching through the bars with anxious hands, she released his warm dick into the cool night air. A shiver rushed through Keith as she opened her mouth and pulled his body toward it, by the seams of his pants. She took his dick into her left hand, spit into the palm of her right, and rubbed his mushroom head in a gentle circular motion with her palm. She looked up at him as he stood in the night with his hips pressed forward, his cock thrust between the protective bars of her project window.

  Keith’s desire expanded into arrogant expectation in her hands. She flicked his dick twice with her tongue tip and smiled when it jumped on command. “There is nothing tastier than a bite of revenge,” she whispered under her breath.

  She had a tight grip on his pants, pulling him toward her mouth. Then, suddenly, she opened her mouth wide, and then guided his dick inside of it. She jabbed it deeply into the back of her throat, as far as she could without gagging. No lips; just throat. No hands; just her hot mouth receiving him. There was no sucking; just deep mouth fucking. So unexpected; so aggressive that it only took a few minutes until he was on the verge of busting.

  Korea gripped his dick firmly in her hand and pumped it like a shotgun. Keith’s eyes rolled back in his head; his knees began to weaken. He grabbed the bars and held on tight to the metal as he plunged himself deeper and harder inside her anxious mouth. The intensity inside his dick grew stronger as his blood pumped and pulsated through it. As Korea felt the veins inside it pushing against the shaft walls, warning her of an impending explosion, she bit down hard with her teeth, locking her jaws like a pit bull, and she did not let go until she tasted blood.

  The pain stilled him. Korea watched him drop like a rag doll to the ground beneath her bedroom window. Both hands on his dick, he curled into a fetal position, writhing in pregnant silence. Korea spit into her towel, rinsed her mouth with peroxide, and wiped the blood and cum away.

  “Bitches!” Keith said with shallow breath.

  “No, you’re looking like the bitch right about now!” Korea said, wiping her mouth again. “Aw, what’s wrong? I know you ain’t trippin’ off a little pain.”

  “This shit ain’t over,” he said.

  “Oh, it needs to be. As a matter of fact, you need to get your punk ass up off the ground before I call the police and let them know there’s a flasher in the neighborhood. I hear the sirens right up the street. I don’t think it’ll take them long to get here.”

  “Naw,” he muttered, pulling himself up to his feet, looking at the girl he had been macking on for months in disbelief. “This shit ain’t over by a long shot.”

  “Really? Remember, sixteen might get you thirty-two. Wait right there. Let me go get my mother real quick, so she can explain it to you!”

  Keith lunged at the window. Korea slammed it shut. Keith looked up at the helicopter circling above his head. It was shining a bright searchlight over the projects.

  Korea tapped lightly on the glass, and pointed up. “Here they come, Keith.” She cracked her window open as he and his broken dick limped to his car. “Oh, 261.5 is the state penal code for statutory rape!” she called after him. “Look it up, you simple-ass motherfucker!”

  She could hear his pretty car screeching down the street. She put her T-shirt back on and sat in the window for a few minutes and listened to the commotion in the night outside.

  Gladys was awakened by a recurring flash of light flooding through her windows. She lay in silence for a while, and then she thought she heard voices. She squeezed her eyes and tried to see if they were real voices or not. But they had stopped. Her tape had stopped, too. She flipped it over and pushed play on the tape machine.

  “Actions speak louder than words,” the voice on the recorder began. “And remember, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction…”

  Gladys got up and went to the bathroom. Korea heard the toilet flush and her mother walking down the hallway toward her room. Quickly, she turned off the nightlight, slipped under the covers, and closed her eyes. When Gladys turned on the bedroom light, the girl tossed in her bed and screamed out, as if she had been having a nightmare. “That’s what you get!”

  “Korea? Baby, are you all right?” Her mother looked at the window instinctively, and then walked over to the bed. She turned the radio off and scratched her head. She picked up the peroxide, looked at the bottle, and then at her sleeping daughter.

  Her mother rubbed her hand across her daughter’s dewy skin, wincing a bit at a scent she could not quite place. It had been years since she’d been with Korea’s father, or any man for that matter, but the smell of a man was so distinctive, she could have sworn…

  “Naw,” she said, “I know better than that.” Her little tomboy would never…

  At the bedroom door, she looked back at her little prodigy and dismissed the thought. Not far off in the night, Gladys could hear dogs barking and men’s voices on walkie-talkies. Were they getting closer?

  KEITH DROVE ACROSS THE BRIDGE IN SO MUCH PAIN; he could barely see or think clearly. The flood of nonsensical ideas for retaliation would not stop flowing. He was going to have Dream Crow whip Korea’s ass and bring her to him. Then he would drag her into his stable and make her work his track. He would be merciless with her. He would beat her and pull out every pimp trick he had ever read in an Iceberg Slim or Donald Goines book. He would take that bitch down so far, she would be fucking pit bulls for a fix before he even got started on his plan to make her hate herself. She would curse the day she ever spent one dime of his money. He would pull out her teeth one at a time and make her suck his dick for dinner every night.

  From the street outside, Keith could see that the condo was dark. Inside the apartment building, he leaned against the door to the condo, knocking with one hand, holding his dick with the other. When Dream Crow did not answer, he fished for his key and let himself in. There was no sign of Dream Crow.

  “Bitches!” he cursed out loud.

  He walked over to the bar and poured a shot of whiskey into a glass and downed it, and poured another. He stripped off his clothes and walked to the kitchen, wet a dishtowel in the sink, and grabbed an ice tray from
the freezer. In his room, he sat back on the bed with his back resting against the headboard. With ice wrapped in a rag cooling his wounded dick, he sipped from his glass and let the whiskey numb his mind. He was getting foggy already when he grabbed the phone off the hook and paged Dream Crow with a 9-1-1. She had not called back before he passed out.

  “I HOPE YOU GOT SOME GOOD MAN PUSSY, NIGGAH.” Titus was standing over his naked body. “Your bitch done snatched up one of mine’s. You gon’ take her place.”

  Keith was reaching for his gun in the nightstand drawer when something hit him in the back of the head.

  IT HAD BEEN MONTHS SINCE KEITH HAD SEEN DREAM CROW. He lay in bed next to some hairy trick Titus had steered to his seedy Fillmore hotel room. He thumped the needle and stuck himself in the vein of his left arm, and let the opiate work its magic on him.

  “Sweet, sweet, Brown Sugar,” he whispered, turning on the television set with the remote control. He flipped through the channels, stopping when he heard Don Cornelius’ voice. “That was the beautiful Dream Crow and her sister, Blue, performing their number one hit ‘Unpimpable.’”

  Keith watched in utter confusion as his bottom bitch cooed with Don Cornelius.

  Tears welled in his eyes. He tried to sob quietly so the hairy man would not wake up. “So, are you going to give us another song?” Don Cornelius asked Dream Crow.

  “Yes,” she said. “This one is dedicated to someone I used to know. It’s called ‘Head in the Clouds.’”

  Keith drew the heroin through a ball of cotton in a small dish beside his bed, and let Dream Crow serenade him with the sweetest lullaby he had ever heard.

  “I got my head in the clouds, and I

  Don’t have a doubt, ’bout my dreams

  And though it seems, you can’t see

  What I see, and who I want to be—

  It comes so easily, when you believe…”

  The most beautiful lullaby he had ever heard. Keith closed his eyes; his heart rate slowed to a turtle’s pace as he listened. His stomach churned; vomit spilled over his shallow breath. Then Keith was gone.