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CHAPTER TWO
Reginald
Avery had been messing with Professor Thickman for a few weeks, while campus quieted down for finals and in anticipation of winter break. He usually met him back at the industrial arts building again, but he also went to Thickman’s apartment a couple times. He had agreed not to mess with Rayshawn again, but it didn’t come up for awhile because Rayshawn had several girlfriends during that time.
When Rayshawn finally called him next, looking to blow a load one rainy Saturday morning, he groaned and complained of a hangover. “I don’t wanna see none of my bitches right now, I can’t handle that,” he said, his voice gurgly and rancid; you could tell his breath smelled awful even through the phone. “Come over. I need to get my nut off, and I don’t need no bitches prattlin’ on ’bout some stupid shit.”
Avery said, “Oooh, sorry, baby, your basketball coach asked me to stop seeing you, and I agreed-“
“What? Thickman? Is that what he was talkin’ about? That nosy asshole. He oughta mind his own goddamn business-“
“Hmmm, maybe, but… I agreed to do it.” Avery paused. It wasn’t clear it had sunk in to Rayshawn that Avery was saying no. People didn’t often tell Rayshawn no. Avery cleared his throat and repeated himself, “So I have to say no. I’m not going to come jack you off. You can jack yourself off.”
Rayshawn paused and grunted, his voice now awkward and creaky. He wasn’t used to having to beg for it. “Uh… c’mon, man… I won’t tell Thickman. I won’t. I promise, he don’t gotta know, I don’t tell that nigga nothin’. I’ll tell him you said no-“
“Sorry, Rayshawn,” Avery said. “He told me anytime I want a nut, I can go jack him off instead-“
Rayshawn scoffed. “That old nigga? Don’t he taste like mothballs?”
“He tastes marvelous,” Avery said. “Plus he does me in the butt. He doesn’t say it’s too gross. And he doesn’t text his girlfriends when I give him dome.”
Rayshawn seethed audibly through the phone. He didn’t have enough experience being nice to convince anyone of anything. His nostrils flared. “Man… Will you at least write that poem? You gotta do that. You already said you would.”
Avery sighed. “Oh my god, Rayshawn, it’s a twelve-line poem! Just let yourself feel something, and write some words about it. The only rule is you can’t do grammar and punctuation right. You can’t fail at writing a poem. If it takes you over thirty seconds, you’re doing it wrong.”
“I can!” he shouted into the phone, losing his temper and following that up with a barrage of insults and cursing. “You fuckin’ asshole! I can’t — I can’t — I have practice, man! I gotta lift weights and shit!”
“You’re hungover! You don’t have shit to do, you have a hangover-“
“Yeah! A hangover! I can’t write a poem with a hangover!”
“Most good poets are always hungover! It’s twelve lines, Rayshawn! You could have written three in the time it took you to whine to me about it! Just write about racism. If it’s about racism, she’ll always give you an A. That’s what I do,” Avery said.
“I don’t know nothin’ about racism… maaaaan,” Rayshawn said.
Avery paused. “Oh holy shit, you forgot my name, didn’t you?”
“Uh, no, it’s, uh… Jerry?”
“Jerry! JERRY?! You think I’m the kind of slack-jawed fuckwit who would be named Jerry?!” Avery hung up, but he kept muttering on autopilot as though Rayshawn could still hear him. “You’re such a useless shit, Jesus Christ, Rayshawn, get ahold of yourself. Too much pussy makes men dumb.”
But already he was kind of regretting hanging up the phone; Rayshawn might have been a self-absorbed moron, but he did have a tasty dick that got hard so very easily. Once his blood had stopped boiling, and he stopped smirking over Rayshawn’s insistence he couldn’t write a twelve-line poem, Avery really wanted to swing on his dick.
So Avery decided that today was a Professor Thickman day.
He had had about enough of Rayshawn anyway — he was expensive to see (Avery had kind of lied when he said he only ever gave Rayshawn twenty dollars — that was the only cash Avery had ever given him, but he often bought him a hamburger, or a shirt, or a gold chain, or sneakers, or a present to give his girlfriend of the moment, and that stuff added up). And Rayshawn was always a jerk. He farted on Avery’s bed once. He saw a picture of Avery’s mom and said “Who’s that fat old bitch?” He laughed at a blind man eating soup. He didn’t tip well, even with Avery’s money.
But that dick was so fucking craveable… It was all Avery could think about it until he got to Thickman’s neighborhood and had verified he was home.
“Rayshawn called you? That horny bastard,” Thickman said when he opened the door.
“I refused to write him a poem. He was furious. He had like two months to do it, and he doesn’t think he can,” Avery said as he came in. The apartment smelled like a bachelor — specifically, it smelled like a black bachelor, which Avery found alluring. There were scents of coconut butter and sweat and medicinal lotion and sweat-soaked underwear and takeout steak-and-cheese subs without the bun and farty drawers and wrinkled clothes that lived in a hamper and Febreze and unwashed bedsheets that stank of armpits. It was an alluring smell, even if it also made Avery wrinkle his nose.
Thickman did indeed live in a sad little apartment with a living room dominated by a bench press. The first time Avery had come over, Thickman had covered the weights up with a sheet because Avery had called him out on it when they first met, but he had stopped doing so eventually. The bench press was even a little moist today, like Thickman had been using it recently and his backsweat still clung to it. Thickman was shirtless when he opened the door. Avery tweaked his nipple as he walked in, and Thickman ignored it though it made his pecs twitch.
As usual, Avery first cleaned up Thickman’s apartment a little. Avery liked cleaning up after his men; there was something seductive about it. He wiped down the kitchen counter while Thickman looked at him, frustrated, wanting to get right to taking his dick out but not saying so because it would be rude. His broad chest gleamed with the remains of his post-workout shower.
A scowl overtook the wry smile on Thickman’s square jaw. He licked his teeth. “Rayshawn’s a fucking moron. You know he failed the fucking diversity thing?”
“What? He’s black, how can he fail at diversity?”
“Not that, it was a written test. Multiple-fucking-choice. It’s just a bunch of stupid-ass questions, like ‘are transgender people a part of the modern working environment?’ and shit like that, and he ain’t even pay no attention, just colored in the little bubbles like it don’t matter. He said he was gonna make you do it later-“
“Oh my god, that lazy fuck-“
“But I ain’t allowed to do that. It’s set by court order for athletes, on ‘ccount of that tennis team that looked at a waitress a buncha times. I gotta score it right away,” Thickman said. “So he failed. He failed this fucking idiot-class for idiot-athletes. All he had to do was, y’know, promise not do no holocausts, and he wanted to make you do it.”
“He couldn’t pay me enough to do a diversity test. His dick’s not that good,” Avery said with a snort. He finished clearing off the counter. “You’ve got clean dishes in the cabinet! You’re not eating out of the dishwasher? What progress! Hey, is that Chinese place downstairs any good? We should celebrate by eating-“
“Nah, it sucks. And we gotta hurry,” Thickman said. He looked down at his feet sheepishly. “I mean, I’ll cornhole you and shit, y’know, whatever. But I gotta run. It’s almost Christmas.” He shrugged.
“Oh yeah, cool. December’s really going quick this year. You got Christmas shopping to do?”
“Uh… Yeah. Sorta.” Thickman sounded like he was lying. He sighed dramatically. Avery realized something was wrong, but Thickman had said he was in a hurry, so Avery dropped to his knees right there in the kitchen. He stroked Thickman’s cock through his jeans. Thickman wrinkled his nose. “My girl dumped me.”
“Alice? I thought she already did-“
“Nah, for real this time. She dumped me hard,” Thickman said. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back as his cock flopped out through the fly of his heavy-denim jeans. “She ain’t even gonna let me lick her pussy no more.” His dick was hefty and soft, jelly-like. Avery let it rub on his face and his nose, and then he flopped it over his lips, while Professor Thickman kept talking. “She been gettin’ mad salty on account of me not like… She don’t like me drinkin’ none, or goin’ to the gentleman’s club. I told her it ain’t no thing, it ain’t — there’s no hos there, it’s classy. It’s real classy. They don’t even show they snatch. Just tits.” He paused and looked down as though he had only now noticed his dick was out and Avery was flopping it over his face. Thickman frowned. “Why you always playin’ wit’ it?”
“Fine, fine, you are in a hurry, huh?” Avery said. Thickman usually enjoyed letting Avery play with his limp dick before and/or after he blew his wad. He had never said that, but he didn’t complain, and Avery had gotten the impression he liked it.
His cock finally disappeared into Avery’s mouth, and the moment it hit his tongue, Avery felt a powerful twitch as it perked up. Thickman threw his head back. His hands fluttered awkwardly at first, as they always did — women complained about his callused hands, so it always took until his dick was fully hard before Thickman could get back in the habit of really gripping onto Avery’s head and going to town on his throat.
Finally it was rock-hard. Avery rammed his own head down as deep as he could go, until his throat closed and a little gag escaped from his chest. Thickman let out a throaty cluck and began rolling his hips, gyrating slowly, humping the back of Avery’s mouth.
His heavy jeans were still on, cock and balls protruding from the fly. They were his workpants, brown spots from wood-stain, pale spots from bleach and an area over the left calf where the fabric was oddly smooth and stiff, due to a spill of some kind of industrial solvent last year.
Precum’s salty taste flooded Avery’s senses as he slurped on Thickman’s cocktip. Thickman let out a little groan that made Avery giggle — it sounded a lot like Rayshawn groaning; Thickman could almost be his uncle. Avery’s hands roamed up to Thickman’s chest, kneading his firm flesh and making his pecs flex again and again.
Then Thickman received a text message. His phone beeped, and he growled with hostility. He grabbed the phone from the counter and looked at it, then he groaned in annoyance this time. He was again ignoring his dick in Avery’s mouth.
“Aw, shit, my sister is bringin’ her husband. Can’t stand that uppity asshole,” he said. He sounded depressive about that. He bit his lip and let out an overly dramatic sigh. “My brother-in-law on my sister’s side are gonna be so fucking bitchy. Every time I’m single, she and him are a bunch of assholes about it, like givin’ me pamphlets on suicide and sayin’ crap, like if I ain’t talk so much shit about Asian people maybe I’d have a girlfriend-“
“You got beef with Asian people?” Avery asked, thwapping his face with Thickman’s shaft.
“Nothin’! I just told ’em ain’t nevuh been one on my basketball team,” Thickman said. “They said that was racist. I was like, if you want Asian dudes to play basketball, you go teach ’em. But they ain’t wanna do that, they too busy calling stuff racist on Facebook.”
Avery rolled his eyes. “They sound like jackasses.”
“Yeah. I hate them. When my mom dies, I’ll prolly never talk to my sister again,” he said. He grumbled and closed his eyes. “Now quit makin’ me think about my family, or I ain’t nevuh gonna nut.” He grabbed Avery’s head and plowed in, his cock sliding down Avery’s throat until Avery’s nose nuzzled his pubic hair.
The taste of his cock — much cleaner this time, with a faint cocoa-scented soap scent — flooded Avery’s senses. He gurgled on it loudly, deeply, sucking up his own spit when it dripped in clumps out of his mouth. Professor Thickman threw his head back and grunted. His orgasm was so loud and animated it looked almost painful.
Cum sprayed over Avery’s tongue, great creamy gobs of it that coated his throat. He suckled on it loudly, ignoring his own lungs crying out for oxygen. It ran down Avery’s chin and Thickman’s shaft, the pale white color contrasting with the deep loamy brown of his skin.
His cheeks turning red, Avery slurped on the intensely flavored jism, making Thickman’s whole body shake with pleasure. His cock was still going, still leaking long jets of cum into Avery’s mouth, which couldn’t contain it all. Big clots of it spilled out and onto the floor of Thickman’s kitchen.
If I don’t clean that, it’ll still be here congealing next time I come… Avery thought with an internal laugh. He kept going, even as Thickman twitched and twisted with every brust of over-sensitive pleasure emanating from his cocktip.
“Aw, shit…” Thickman at last pulled out, his dick flopping over Avery’s face. He chuckled. “Aw… You oughta come wit’ me today, man. You could swallow my dick whenever I get annoyed with ’em. You could get all bitchy wit’ my sister, you’re good at bitchin’.” He chuckled at his joke.
“Okay.” Avery said. Then he looked up at Thickman to see if he was kidding or not.
He was.
Thickman chuckled. “Shit… You could really do your bitchy thing to my in-laws and my sister-“
“Oh my god, yes! That’s such a good idea!” Avery clapped his hands. He already had a paper towel in hand and was cleaning up the cum that had dripped onto Thickman’s kitchen floor. “I’ll come to your Christmas thing. How bitchy do you want me to be? Scale of one to ten.”
“Uh… Like a six. Thanks, man.”
“You never need to thank me for acting bitchy. It’s in my blood,” Avery said. “Am I dressed okay?”
“You’re fine for my mom’s place,” Thickman said. He grabbed a button-down shirt and put it on. It was plain and cheap, and it made him look like he was on his way to a court date, but Avery didn’t say that. He was excited about meeting Thickman’s family — he never got to be a real part of the lives of the men he messed around with.
“How far away is your mom’s house?”
“Just the other side of town.” Thickman cleared his throat. “There is one other thing.”
“Oh?”
“It ain’t Christmas. It’s Kwanzaa. Technically Kwanzaa don’t start for a couple days, but my fucking idiot bitch sister is taking her idiot bitch husband to Ghana for Kwanzaa — after borrowing money from me this summer for rent, she can suddenly afford to go to Ghana. So we doin’ it early this year.”
“You celebrate Kwanzaa?”
“My mom does,” he said. He snorted and looked away. “And my sister. And yeah, me too.”
“I didn’t know anyone actually did that. I thought Kwanzaa was a joke.”
“My mom loves explaining Kwanzaa to white people. Just be interested in it,” he said. He put his shoes on.
“Okay. What is Kwanzaa?”
“Yeah, like that.”
“No, I was asking you — I just didn’t want to look ignorant-“
“Yeah, say shit like that to my mom. She eats that up,” Thickman said. He put his keys in his pocket and headed for the door. “C’mon, let’s go.”
Avery had to hurry after him; he was still cleaning up the cum on the floor and on his chin, when he hurried out of the apartment. Thickman was often like that, rushing, ignoring that Avery wasn’t keeping up with him. Avery rushed out the door.
Thickman kept on muttering to himself as he led Avery out of the building. “Kwanzaa is so fuckin’ stupid….”
“Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad.”
Professor Thickman’s family Kwanzaa celebration was at his mother’s ramshackle old house on the outskirts of town. Given its location, it was probably worth a lot of money — the property alone was valuable. But the house was rundown and in dire need of repairs.
But it was a nice, homey kind of home. Avery squealed with delight at the decorations; he had always been good at getting on parents’ good sides. Everything was red, black and green, and candles filled the home with light — and heat. “Oh my god, your home is so beautiful!” he said. He smiled. “I’ve heard Kwanzaa lasts eight days like Hannukah, isn’t that right, ma’am?”
“Oh call me Vera, sweetie,” Vera Thickman said. She was nearly seventy, her hair frazzled and white, her face saggy but sweet. She smiled at Avery. “No, dear, Kwanzaa only lasts seven days. But every day has a different theme. Today is the first day of Kwanzaa, so the theme is unity. Or rather, it’s not the first day of Kwanzaa, but we’re pretending it is,” she said.
Before Avery could say anything else, the rest of the family showed up. Thickman’s sister Marybeth, her husband Jake and their three kids. Avery smiled and greeted them as Marybeth looked at him like he had done something wrong, She looked just as bitchy as her brother had described her — you could just imagine her wrinkling her nose at every little thing, demanding her spineless husband scold waiters, no doubt complaining when the kids touched anything that hadn’t been disinfected.
They made small talk, and Thickman was glad that Avery was outgoing and friendly and dominated the conversation. Thickman never really felt that comfortable around his family, especially his sister. She had always been a striving bitch.
Since Avery was the one who talked about the holiday, the weather, the decor, the dog, the kitchen, etc, Thickman stopped paying attention entirely. That meant his mind wandered, and there was one place his mind always wandered when he let it out: women.
Specifically, one woman he had met last night. He got her number at the bar, but he hadn’t called her yet. She had seemed hot to trot, and she wasn’t the most beautiful woman, but she was available and she was confident he was going to get in her pussy sooner or later.
Not tonight though. He had to sit here with his hardon imprisoned by his jeans — the nicest pair he owned, though now he wished he had bought some new pants — not jeans, slacks — so he would be dressed as well as his brother-in-law, Jake. Or at least almost as well.
But Jake wore a pink tie and skinny slacks like a hipster. They almost looked like a woman’s pantsuit, Thickman thought. He strongly disliked his brother-in-law.
“How’s your team’s record this year, Reginald?” Jake asked.
Thickman — he hated being called Reginald, except by his mother — glowered and said, “Fine. We goin’ to the playoffs, sure as shit-“
“Language!”
“Sorry mama,” Thickman said. He just wanted to get Avery away from his family to get his nut off again. That would make this family get-together a lot more tolerable.
He realized with a start that that wasn’t entirely true — it was true, sort of, but the part of this that he was really enjoying was Avery’s company. Avery’s mouth would be a little bonus.
It had been a long time since Reginald Thickman had enjoyed someone’s company. His girlfriends had long annoyed him. His players were a bunch of mouthy punks. He didn’t trust any of his coworkers. His students were morons. His family spent most of their time borrowing money from him and bitching about his lack of enthusiasm for Afrocentric scrapbooking.
Avery didn’t really want anything from him, except sex, which he was glad to give. He had genuinely enjoyed Avery’s company. Avery didn’t even ask for anything in exchange for coming here today — Thickman’s last girlfriend wouldn’t even do that. She wouldn’t do anything he wanted without making a big ordeal out of it. She treated visiting his mom as just as much a favor as sucking his dick on his birthday.
When they managed to get away for a few minutes later on — while attention was focused on the kids and some ceremony involving corn and candles — Thickman pulled his pants down and let Avery go to town on him. He was in his old bedroom. It felt like old times; he’d been sucked off here by his girlfriends some thirty years ago.
I wonder why girls don’t suck as much dick as they used. Cuz I’m older? Do girls not suck dick anymore? When they had argued when they first met, Avery had said that, when Thickman reached middle-age, girls started seeing his muscles as less sexy and more gross, creepy not handsome, dirty and callused and stinky, not alluring or arousing. Thickman had never realized that.
But it was true. The same muscles that got him laid when he was Avery’s age now made him seem like some undateable man-boy. So he flexed his biceps, standing there with a dour look on his face as though he was annoyed by Avery hanging off his muscles and licking the sweat off his rock-hard biceps.
“Hmmm, your muscles taste so good…” Avery murmured, his mouth moving down to Thickman’s armpit. His bare chest muscles rippled. Thickman’s teenage-bedroom still smelled like a young man, Avery thought, like it hadn’t been cleaned in decades. There were boxes of stuff he had deposited here over the years and never got back — old paperwork, a box of tee shirts, a couple weightlifting trophies, a scrapbook of high-school basketball team — his mom made scrapbooks, and Thickman tried very hard to look interested; he didn’t have the gene that made it possible to have any interest in a scrapbook. He was simply incapable of it. So he kept the scrapbooks she made for him here; that way she knew and appreciated that he hadn’t thrown them away, but they didn’t take up space in his apartment.
Thickman sighed. He wanted to thank Avery for helping him out with this, but he didn’t know how. He didn’t often talk about his feelings. He wanted to say that this was his way of saying thanks, but Avery, he thought, would just get snippy about it again like he had before. Thickman did want it as much as Avery wanted to give it, so he couldn’t really call it a gift by any means.
But he was pretty sure Avery got the appreciation he felt but couldn’t say. Avery smiled as Thickman’s cock again popped out of his fly and disappeared thickly down his throat. Avery gurgled on the warm, sunny taste as it thickened up. His smiled turned to a smirk when Thickman shushed him. His family was far from the bathroom, and the children were being loud, so it wasn’t necessary to be all that quiet. Avery made a loud smacking noise with his lips until Thickman scowled at him.
“Shush, man, my sister is nosy as hell. She love eavesdroppin’, gettin’ the shit on people,” Thickman said softly. He threw his head back and suppressed a moan. His cock was rapidly hardening now. The fact that he couldn’t make any noise somehow made the sensations even more intense. He wanted to tell Avery a story — his sister had once gotten her boss fired simply by listening at his office door every day until she found some dirt on him — but the feelings were too intense.
All he could think about was the pangs of pleasure exploding in his dick, which oozed gooey precum into Avery’s mouth. Avery let out an uncontrollable moan of desire.
“Hmmmm… You taste even better in this room,” Avery said. He blushed and giggled quietly, as Thickman shot him another harsh be-quiet look. He resumed deep-throating, his nose burying itself in Thickman’s crotch. A shiver of bliss shot up Thickman’s spine, and his chest muscles rippled. He grunted and groaned.
He was about to say something when he orgasmed. A grunt escaped from his mouth as the first few drops of cum flew into Avery’s mouth. The sour, salty and sweet taste of semen flooded Avery’s senses.
Then came more, and Thickman grimaced as though it hurt to not make any noise. Great big wads coated Avery’s mouth, more quickly than he could swallow, so a lot of it slipped out past his lips and plopped onto the carpet of Thickman’s old bedroom.
Still more came out, as Thickman leaned back to grab his shirt — he was already getting ready to go back out there, even as his cock kept cumming and his orgasm kept flowing through his veins. His whole body twitched with his shirt in hand.
“Shuuuuussssssh…” he said, though Avery hadn’t made any noise.
Then Thickman shot the last of his load down Avery’s throat and let out a long, chest-rattling sigh. That had been louder than any part of the blowjob, Avery thought but didn’t say. He stroked Thickman’s heavy balls as he drained every last drop of cum out of his shaft.
“Thanks a lot, man.”
“Aw, shucks,” Avery said, wiping lips off. “Thanks for inviting me. And Merry Kwanzaa.”
“You supposed to say ‘Joyous Kwanzaa’,” Thickman said as he tucked his dick away into his workpants. He definitely resolved to buy new pants before he saw his brother-in-law the next time though. Next time would be his sister’s birthday; it would be next month, at her house, and she was definitely going to ask him to wear “a nice pair of paints” as though he was an idiot for not doing that every day. He should have done it a few days ago so he could wear the new pants today and not have to endure her bitching about it later.
They went back out then to wash up for dinner. Thickman was glad to be here for the first time in a long time. He wasn’t just eager to finish eating and leave. Since the focus was on Avery, he could just eat and enjoy his mother’s cooking like he hadn’t really had a chance to do for a long time.
“So, Reginald, how’s that women’s studies program?”
“Huh?” Thickman grunted, a few bits of chicken falling from his mouth.
“Your college? They have that new women’s studies professor?” Marybeth sighed overly dramatically. “It was on Facebook. You know, I really think you could show a little more interest in women’s issues.”
Avery broke in with a polite smile. “Oh, Reginald is very interested — we don’t like to ghettoize women and force them into women’s studies departments. All subjects are women’s studies in a way, don’t you think?” Avery smiled. “So Reginald prefers not to otherize women in that way. He would rather integrate women into regular educations. Plus I think there’s some transgender issues around having ‘women’s issues’. I mean, what are women’s issues, really?
Vera nodded her wizened old head. “So true, so true…” She did look confused though — she didn’t know what transgender meant, but she responded to the seemingly feminist bent to Avery’s words.
Marybeth looked like her head might explode. Nobody had ever challenged her in terms of political correctness at a family event. She glanced at her pasty-white husband as though he might support her, but he was focused on the green beans he had described as fabulous.
Avery smiled sweetly. “So me and Reginald have insisted on the college ensuring that women have equal access to his industrial development courses, and we personally designed all-new letterheads that refer to the Foreperson Training course, not Foreman,” Avery said. “We were going to launch a recruitment program this summer, but then Mr. Moneybags over here had to help a friend with some sort of trip to Ghana. I just hope they’re paying their carbon offsets for that little trip!”
“Hmmmm… Hmm-hm.” Marybeth gritted her teeth and looked down at her food, which she had only barely touched. When she thought Avery wasn’t looking at her anymore, she looked right at him with hate in her eyes.
Vera cleared her throat and looked at her son, who barely concealed his grin as he shoveled food in his face. “How is your art going, Reginald?”
“Aw, mama…” Reginald bit his lip.
“Like he knows anything about art,” Marybeth said with a snort.
“He’s made this amazing sculpture,” Avery said. “It’s black, and it’s got a wonderful shape to it. Thick, solid, very nice.” He looked at Thickman who snorted back laughter. “It makes me think about industry, you know, it makes me feel productivity — isn’t that weird? It’s like economics taken form, but it’s black too, it’s a symbol for our racial coding of work. It’s quite complex, Marybeth, but you sound like an expert on that sort of thing. Are you an artist?”
“I’ve self-published several books of poetry,” she said. “They’re about the patriarchy.” She hesitated like she couldn’t think of any details to add. “And, uh… the, uh… way we respond to… it.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful! I think it’s great to have projects to work on without regard for accolades,” Avery said. “Reginald is going to submit his sculpture to the Modern Art Expo this spring. But there’s something really fulfilling about doing art that’s just for you, you know?”
“My poems are about the patriarchy,” she said. She gritted her teeth, still flustered. “Uh… taking it down.”
“Oh. Well, I suppose that doesn’t apply to those kind of poems. There’s no point in writing about taking down the patriarchy if no one ever sees it, since you can’t take it down alone,” Avery said. “I’m sorry, that was dismissive of your work! I apologize so much! I’m sure your poems have an audience, of course! They’re probably an inspiration for plenty of young girls, huh? I bet you get tons of teenage girls reading it. They love self-published poetry.”
“Yes… Of course.” She glowered and frowned at him. She’d barely eaten a thing, she just spent the entire meal staring daggers at Avery.
“I read somewhere that most self-published books of poetry sell a couple thousand copies, you can actually make good money off it. Has that been your experience, Marybeth?” he asked. He cocked his head to the side and raised his eyebrows.
Her teeth were gritted shut. She managed to murmur a yes and nod her head. Avery smirked at her as her brother got up to clear the table.
Avery pointedly ignored her staring daggers while they all finished clearing the table. He stood next to Thickman when they lit some candles and reminisced about old times after dinner. Vera explained the more Kwanzaa traditions, and Avery followed along in rapt attention.
“Thank you so much for exposing me to your diversity,” Avery said when the evening was finally over. “It was a lovely ceremony and a delicious meal!”
He stood there talking about it with Vera for what felt — to Thickman — like an hour. He didn’t know how people could do that. Polite people took like an hour to say goodbye, he thought, while he just stood there like a big dumb idiot, an overgrown teenage boy who still couldn’t have adult small-talk. Thickman glowered even as he hugged and kissed his mom goodbye. He told her he loved her.
Then at last, he and Avery left. Avery had a little plastic container of leftovers, which he clutched like a magical talisman as he got into Thickman’s truck.
“Your mom’s a real good cook,” Avery said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m gonna eat the hell outta that macaroni and cheese when I get drunk later,” Avery said. Thickman backed out of the driveway, and a smile appeared on his face. Avery smiled back at him. “How was I? Just bitchy enough?
“That was awesome, man. She must be be so pissed. I bet she asks me for money for them carbon offsets,” Thickman said. “I ain’t payin’ either. I paid for that goddamn trip to Ghana, they can pay for the carbon offsets.”
“Why do you give her money anyway? She’s such a bitch.”
Thickman shrugged. “My mama would be pissed if I didn’t,” he said. “She thinks family gotta stick together.”
“She should tell your sister that.”
“Yeah.” Thickman cleared his throat. “Thanks for all that. Thanks for being nice to me.”
“Aw, shucks… You’re welcome. Can I play with your dick on the way home?”
“Yeah.” He grunted. “I’m serious though. Thanks for bein’ nice. Not a lotta people are really nice to me. Not like… nice. You know, they want me to do shit for ’em, like my sister got a protest every weekend she want me at, and my momma always want me over fixin’ shit or movin’ furniture, and my players always want me to let ’em outta practice and find ’em easier classes to take, and… You ain’t ask nothin’ from me.”
“Uh, that’s not true. I demand yards of cock! Yards! On demand!”
He chuckled. “Uh, so, like… You make me feel good. Not just my dick. But like… me.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “So thanks, Avery. Thanks a lot for bein’ nice.”
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