“Boyd’s Enlistment Blues” by Frederick Foote

Aawww, man, this is bullshit. There ain’t no God. Ain’t no God. God is just a front. A front for Coyote, Spider, Br’er Rabbit, Loki, and all them other tricksters. And when you catch them tricksters in the act of fuckin’ you over and over and over, they just shrug and say, “Hey, hey, hey! It’s God’s will, Brother. Better luck next time.” They fuck with you man. They truly do. And the way they do it is so fucked up. They give you what you want, but it is never, ever, what you think it is. They’re some devious motherfuckers. Anything-for-a-laugh motherfuckers.

Right now, today, I have twelve hours before I meet The Man. In twelve hours, I’ll be on the bus to Lackland Air Force Base for basic training. Thirty days ago, I signed the papers, signed away my soul to the military industrial complex.

It seemed like, looked like, felt like the right thing to do at the time. I was just messing up in community college; majoring in Track, Big Legged Girls, and Dominoes, with a minor in Bid Whist.

It seemed like Moms and I were always at odds, never on the same page anymore.

My part-time job had been cut back so much that it had just about disappeared.

I was so broke I couldn’t get together thirty-three cents for a gallon of gas.

I was so broke I couldn’t pay attention.

And most aggravating was my total inability to have successful intercourse. I had many near successes leading to absurd failures. Here I was: eighteen years and thirty-five days old, and the only eighteen year-old black man in California, maybe in the whole US, who could not get any pussy.

My lame ass cousin had two girls, one up here and one down in Modesto where his dad lives. He gettin’ stuff up here during the week and down there on the weekend. And the nigger will not shut up about what they doing for him and to him.

It’s not like I ain’t trying. My misadventures started back when I was fifteen. When I was seventeen, I finally saved up enough to get a car. I knew I would finally get over. I mean, that’s the reason I got the damn car. The closest I got was Betty Yamada. Betty lived two blocks over. Shit, I didn’t even need a car to get Betty.

Of the four or five guys I hang around with, three got their start with Betty. You buy her two of those big Cokes and a big bag of Lays potato chips. You knock on her bedroom window. She’ll always take your offering. And sometimes, sometimes, she’ll open the window wide and let you in. Let you into her room and into her sweet, sweet spot. Lord have mercy, you get initiated. And, if you are lucky, she’ll even share her Coke and chips with you too. My desperate black ass intended to be one of the lucky many.

Eight Cokes and four bags of chips later, I was climbing through that golden portal ready to cross the great threshold of manhood.

I was nervous. I fumbled around. I started to take off my shoes and pants, but Betty tells me leave my pants on. She has already pulled back her bed spread and spread her legs. And man, I’m looking at it. It’s staring me right in the face, but Betty is in a hurry and my sight-seeing is messing with her schedule. She pulls off her top and wow there are these gorgeous big boobs with brown circles around the nipples. I’m staring at the boobs and fumbling my way to the Promised Land. An increasingly inpatient Betty reaches down to help me. The second her hand touches me, I explode. Betty calls me a dumb ass, and we both freeze when we hear a noise in the hallway outside Betty’s room. Betty practically throws me out of her bedroom window. I land on my face, in the gravel, in the alley behind her house. She tosses out my shoes. I stumble down the alley with a bruised face and a battered ego.

That wasn’t the worst of it. Betty talked. Before you knew it, everyone I knew, knew about my inept performance and less then graceful exit.

And there was nothing I could do about it. I mean, I couldn’t say anything bad about Betty. She was my very best, and only, hope of leaving the ranks of the aging virgins before I joined the ranks of the Air Force.

I started with the offerings again and an apology. The offerings and the apology were readily accepted through the window, but I wasn’t invited back. But I felt I was getting close to being her bedroom window boyfriend again. Betty seemed to be a little less hostile with each offering.

But, then a fucking disaster struck. Betty got a front door boyfriend, a Japanese farmer from Lodi. Shit! No more bedroom window boyfriends. She even put the screen back on the bedroom window. I was fucked. Just not the way I wanted to be fucked.

And I was so close. One or two more offerings, at the most, and I would have been able to redeem myself.

Betty was being romanced with flowers, candy, and movie dates. This farmer cat was serious. And nobody and, I mean, nobody, ratted her out. When she was with her man, we were all polite smiles and sunny pleasantries.

Betty and I, and most of our friends, grew up here in Wilson Tract. We went from elementary school to high school together. Betty was always a little chubby and never very popular. Her best friend from fourth grade to her second year of high school was a skinny, buck-tooth black girl named Nev. When Nev moved out of town, Betty was almost friendless, despite her many bedroom window boyfriends.

Three months after she put back her window screen, she married the farmer from Lodi.

Betty’s father, Mr. Yamada, was a changed man. He rarely smiled before the wedding. Now he smiles all the time. If I had only known she wanted a front door boyfriend. I coulda done that.

But, the jokers were not through with me yet. No, not by a long shot. That was just the warm up act.

Cindy moved into the apartments two blocks from us about a year ago. She is a cute and shy, brown skin, black girly with long “good” hair. I beat everybody to the punch and asked her out. And she said yes. Just like that, she said yes. No begging or pleading or conditions or offerings, just a plain and simple yes. Shit, I knew we had a bright future together.

I took her on the bus (my ride was laid up for repairs) to see “Raisin in the Sun.” She started off quiet and shy. In the movie, she seemed to relax and have a good time. On the ride back, the closer we got to home, the quieter and stiller she got. It was weird. She was like a mummy. When we reached our stop, she got off the bus without a word and walked home without looking at or speaking to me. After that she avoided me at school and in the Tract.

It was a mystery to me. Like, I had brought her caramel corn and a Coke. I even let her eat most of the caramel corn.

The week Betty got married; I was at the corner market when Cindy came in and brought milk. She invited me to walk her home. This was the first time she had spoken to me since our strange date.

At her house, she invited me in. She locked the door behind us. She took me by the hand and led me into her bedroom. I was going to tell her she forgot to put away the milk when she kissed me and pushed me down on the bed. It was on. I pulled off her panties while she undid her bra. When she spread her legs she did not mind me looking, and I took my time looking at her, all of her. I took my time and watched what I was doing. I was taking my first careful step into paradise when I heard this loud ass, thundering noise, like a screech, a scream, and a bellow all rolled into one. I never heard anything like that in my life. I jumped two feet into the air. My dick disappeared. My balls ran after my dick. Cindy screamed and covered herself with a sheet. It was her mother standing in the doorway with a broom.

Her moms was only about five two. I didn’t believe that a woman that small could make a noise that loud.  She was on me in a flash with that broom. I never thought of a broom as a weapon or that a little woman like that could hurt you, especially, with just a broom.

She changed my thinking. She must have known broom karate. She beat me with both ends of that broom and left me with a bloody nose, a black eye, a bruised rib and a walnut sized knot on my forehead. I only escaped because Cindy grabbed the broom and tried to pull it away from her. I left one shoe and my shirt there. I limped home with one consolation; I would see Cindy at school on Monday, and we would figure out how to finish what we started.

The next day was Saturday. Cindy and her moms moved out of their apartment early that Saturday morning.

That Saturday afternoon, I signed my enlistment papers. Can you blame me?

I must have been the tricksters’ favorite TV show, because they keep me tuned in.

I delayed my entry into the Air Force to let my wounds heal and to run in our last two track meets.

One week after my encounter with the witch that turned a broom into a deadly weapon, I was across the river competing in a three way meet when I saw this vision of delight walking around the stadium. Man, she had curves on curves and a face so beautiful that she would bring tears to your eyes. She had an ass on her that could launch a thousand ships. She was the color of a walnut with short black curly hair. She was amazing. I didn’t give myself a chance to think. I just walked right up to her and looked into her eyes and told her, “Hey, I’m gonna win this race for you, and then we gonna rock and roll until the sun comes up.”

She just looked at me and said, “Hummm, interesting.”

That was it. She just walked away swinging that ass. I was blowing smoke. The only thing I had successfully rocked was my fist. The only thing I was rolling was out of was bed in the morning. The only reason I said that was when I looked into her sparkling brown eyes, she gave me permission to say that. Not in words, but in the way she looked at me. It was like she was saying, “Tell me what you really want, and be quick about it.”

I won the race. Bright Eyes was no place around. But when I got to my car there she was leaning against the hood.

Her name was Molly Silva, and she took me through the first time with patience, humor, and expertise. It was amazing. I could not get enough of Molly Silva. At first we just fucked and fucked and fucked. And then we fucked and ate and fucked and talked and ate and talked and fucked again.

And it was the strangest thing. We weren’t in love with each other. We both understood that. We were in lust with each other for sure, and, most important, we liked each other. We talked and listened to each other. I know this sounds weird but after two weeks, I wanted the talking as much as I wanted the sex. I had everything I ever wanted, but just for the next few weeks. The fucking tricksters were probably laughing their ass off.

Wicked, weird shit, right?

But, even weirder shit was going on. The week after I met Molly, I was going to my car after school, and I saw Mary Elizabeth Cabot in the parking lot.

Everyone knows Mary Elizabeth. In high school she was the queen bee, the head cheerleader, the yearbook editor, the one voted most likely to succeed and all that shit. She was white, blonde, blue eyed, rich, and, by definition, the very standard by which beauty is measured.

I went to high school with her for four years, was in classes with her every year, and she did not even know I existed; same school room, different worlds.

And here at community college, she was, again, head cheerleader, and she was in a fix. She was standing there with car keys in her hand in her little cheer leading outfit with steam coming out of her ears and her face the color of a fire engine.

She couldn’t get into her brand new Buick. Someone was messing with her. The cars parked beside her car were so close that she couldn’t get in to open her car doors. We use to do that shit in high school. I was just going to walk on by her, but instead I just grabbed her car keys out of her hand, kicked off my shoes and walked up the roof of her car and lay down. I reached down, unlocked the car door, and slid down between the cars. I stuck my hand in the crack between the door and the frame and wound down the window. I climbed through the window and drove her car out to her.

And of course she didn’t recognize me. She was making all kind of thank you noises, but she still didn’t see me. I just turned and walked away.

Then I did a really, really stupid thing. I walked back to her, took her face in my hands, and I kissed her.

In America, in the USA, that was a black man raping a white woman. Rape in the first degree, even in 1961, even in California. And the cops would arrest me and beat me for it. And the jury would convict me of it. And the judge would go light and give me ninety-nine instead of a hundred years.

I turned around and walked to my car. I knew I was going to jail for a very long time for kissing a girl I didn’t even like just so she would see me. Just so she could see I was real just like her. My moms would be heartbroken. Molly, god, I was going to miss Molly. Fuck it all, easy come, easy go. Fuck me, again.

She rolled up beside me and leaned over and opened the car door. We drove down to River Park to her dad’s cabin cruiser. She didn’t say a fucking word. Weird shit.

We went crazy on each other. We had some weird, crazy, mean, low down, nasty sex. There were some serious issues being fucked away. It was evil, mad, crazy fucking. Not like fucking Molly at all. We were working out some serious shit, or we were making it worst. I really didn’t care. We hurt each other. I loved it. It was brutal, but oh so satisfying, so fucking good. I loved it. She loved it. We loved it.

I love Molly. I’m not in love with Molly. We see each other too clearly. She is my friend. I hope she’ll always be my friend.

I still don’t like Mary Elizabeth. She still doesn’t see me. There is no future for us. None at all, but we need each other so fucking bad. It is a drug. Our need is like smack. We always hurt each other more the next time. I think we aim to kill each other. It’s some sick shit. I love it to death. I hope not literally.

The tricksters are having a field day with me. I have what I wanted, as much sex as I can handle, even more sometimes. If I had to make a choice today, between Molly and Mary Elizabeth, I would choose Mary Elizabeth every fucking time. I can’t help it. That says a lot about me, none of it good. I now have eleven hours left, and I’m driving down to River Park. I hope I survive these eleven hours, but I know the tricksters have something new up their sleeves. They always do. I would pray to God, but the tricksters would think that’s the funniest joke of all. That’s one satisfaction I’m not going to give them demented, mayhem-making motherfuckers. I swear to God that will never happen.

Frederick Foote’s bio:

I was born in Sacramento, California, in 1943 and educated in a racially segregated elementary school in Vienna, Virginia, until I was twelve and returned to Sacramento’s segregated (both racially and economically) schools. 

I served three years, nine months in the US Air Force, and retired from the State of California in 2001.

I have been married for 46 years, and we have two daughters.

I started writing short stories in the spring 2013 semester at Sacramento City College.

I have pestered family and friends for reviews and reactions to my stories.

My MeetUp group has provided writing friends and encouragement.

I thank you all for your patience and support.

This is my first published work.