Saved and SAINTified, page 15
He lit the cigar, and sat back against the headboard, propping one arm behind his head. Still feeling hot, he shook the sheets off of his body. His skin glistened with sweat. He took a puff of his cigar, blew out ringlets of smoke and cleared his throat. Xenia remained fast asleep.
Suddenly craving her again after a few minutes, he set his cigar in a large glass ashtray and rolled her gently onto her stomach. She murmured something incoherent. Lying directly on top of her, her grinded his pelvis against her plump ass. He pushed her legs apart and reached up to link his fingers with hers as he nestled his face close to her ear.
“Baby, let me get a little pussy,” he said huskily.
He waited, and then heard the faint, “Mmmm hmmm.”
He knew she wouldn’t be a very active participant—she was far too tired—but at that moment, it didn’t matter. He just wanted the safety of her confines. He reached between them guided himself inside, and began to quickly thrust, pushing his groin against her ass, harder and harder, rousing her from her fatigue as he went deeper and deeper.
“Uh! Uh! Uh!” He felt driven, running toward a goal of sweet release. His hands wrapped around her stomach, held her body steady against his as he continued to pound her from behind. He buried his head in her right shoulder as his climax approached. He needed the deep penetration before he drifted off to sleep. He needed to feel her and fill her, to receive the love and reassurance. He felt so completely lost and confused, yet all knowing. It was an annoying sensitivity, one that he couldn’t shake.
“Ahhh, shit … Uhhh!” He jammed his hips forcefully into the back of her, making her gasp and claw at her pillow, speechless … as he came inside of her once more. “Uhhh … mmmm…”
Drained, his weight pushed her down until he’d gathered enough strength to roll onto his side of the bed. He rubbed her back and watched her intensely as she fell back asleep, without missing a beat. But Saint couldn’t drift away, just like that. In deep thought, he stayed alert for several hours—blowing out the candles, pacing, channel surfing, finishing his cigar, thinking and contemplating.
Finally, sleep came like a thief in the night with a set of numb chucks and steel brass knuckles. Once fully alert, he was suddenly out, and the world went black. His body welcomed the reprieve, though his mind and spirit continued to knit fables and talk amongst themselves…
****
Several hours later…
The sun filtered into the vast bedroom, illuminating Xenia’s naked body. The room glowed a mellow orange and a sense of peace washed over Saint as he tiptoed his fingertips against her shoulder. The boys would be up soon, and he wanted to spend a little time alone with her, in the silence of their cocooned little world.
Xenia woke and slowly turned toward him, disrupting their spooning position. She ground her face into his bare chest, smiling.
“Saint…” She yawned, curling her small hand around his shoulder. He felt so much love, at times it overwhelmed him.“Yeah, baby,” he replied as he ran his fingers through her wild curls.
“How’d you sleep?” she asked, opening her eyes slowly.
“Not too good. How about you?”
“Dead to the world. I was so tired…”
“I slept; I just had a bunch of strange dreams. They didn’t make sense.”
Xenia sat up straighter and Saint followed suit. He held her hand while they leaned back against their headboard.
“Is something on your mind, honey?”
Saint looked down at the sheets and pondered for a moment. “Yeah, I had so many crazy dreams last night. Some of them were childhood related. I was just thinking about where I grew up.”
“The Bronx.” She smiled. “You seem preoccupied. Talk to me,” she offered over another yawn followed by a sweet smile.
“Yeah.” He chewed his bottom lip and stared off into space. “You know, I told you about some of the things that I saw there, and how scary it was there back in the ’80s. That’s where I was born, yet, I don’t know ... It was just so odd to me, how I saw that shit as normal. I was having a talk with the new guy I told you about, Jagger. We were discussing things like that and then, earlier that morning when I spoke to Hassani, when he called me on your phone, he was telling me about a little boy—”
“Eric.” She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, he told me about him.”
“Yeah, Eric. I’m sorry that Hassani’s feelings were hurt. I talked to him about it though ...” Saint frowned. “I always want to protect them, though I know that I have to let them grow up and learn. Hassani and Dakarai will never have to see what I saw, though. It had more of an impact on me than I realized. No big ass rats, struggling ’nd shit. We were lucky, the gang members were a little afraid of my dad. When I was real little, I was afraid of him, too. My mother protected me, too. Believe it or not, some of the gang members from that time were not that bad. Well, I take that back. I’m saying, if you compare them to the ones around now. It was nothing like that. They could actually fight, the ones I grew up around. Kids ... just lost kids.”
“Well, most people don’t think of gang members as good people, Saint.” Xenia gave a sarcastic laugh and shrugged.
“I know. I’m not saying they were angels, it was just different—they seemed a lot more innocent back then. It was only until crack came that shit got majorly out of control. A lot of the dudes I grew up with are dead, Xenia. Back then, The Puerto Rican and black gangs were predominant. Now, it is the Dominican ones who run the show but in any case that is what I grew up around. I just saw Puerto Ricans, and blacks and whites, getting along real well, most of the time. There were a few Asians, like my mom, but not many. I could count ’em one hand probably. They didn’t want to live in that fuckin’ hell hole. That’s what it was, but it was my hell hole, you know?”
Xenia shook her head in understanding as she rubbed his hand.
“I miss it, sometimes—but not the misery. We were poor as fuck. My grandparents’ business wasn’t doing well so my mom was bringing in less money and my dad had a typical teacher salary. The school was so messed up; sometimes they couldn’t pay him on time. To make matters worse, he had to take a pay cut, a drastic one. We were living on whatever food my mom could get from her parents’ grocery and it was usually the shit that was rotten or about to go bad. She could always turn it into something good though,” He reflected sadly. “At least I had something to eat … that’s more than a lot of people had at that time. My parents wanted to get me out of there. The fuckin’ landlords kept burning their buildings down … paying gang members to do it for chump change. Sometimes mothafuckas would still be living in there. Could you imagine that shit?”
“Why in the world would they do that?”
“For the damn insurance, Xenia.” Steel wrapped around his heart as he raced down memory lane, heated and ready to fight the faded remembrances while he hugged them at the same time. “The crime was bad, real bad, but there was still some semblance of respect for one another. It was one of those things where, if a cat told you he needed some bread, you’d give it to him and he’d pay you back without you havin’ to hunt his ass down. Then, crack came and blew that shit the fuck up. … I saw strong pillars of the community turn to fuckin’ bass heads.” He sprawled his fingers across his forehead.
“All the damn abandoned buildings … people getting high on the shit and heroine. The gangs couldn’t even protect anyone anymore without guns. Before, you’d just get your ass kicked real bad, but after crack,” Saint shook his head and grimaced, “you got shot, point blank, in broad mothafuckin’ daylight. I remember the first time I saw someone get shot. My father wrapped his hand over my mouth so that I wouldn’t scream and we just kept on movin’. These two guys were going after each other and one of ’em turned and popped that mothafucka square in the middle of his chest. I can see it so clearly, like it happened yesterday.”
Saint sniffed and wiped his nose. He was trying to purge, to clean out the cobwebs and make room for the new blessing. He needed to unload.
“You know, besides with Raphael, I never really talk about this shit, Xenia.” He looked at her, his expression grave.
“Yeah…you’ve told me a lot your childhood, but I’m a little surprised you never discussed this part of it with me in more depth.”
“It wasn’t that I was trying to keep it from you, I just honestly wasn’t thinking about it. It was one of those things I just squirreled away and didn’t give much thought to for quite a while because the shit was disturbing.” He swallowed. “We’ve got another baby coming. I don’t want her to ever see any shit like that. I want Hassani and Dakarai to be totally closed off from this sort of thing.” He went back into protection mode. “It has a way of making you hard, cold, rough. You have to be, or you won’t make it.” Then a smile budded across his face. “Oh, check this out,” Saint snapped his fingers like the Fonz. “Yo, there was this one Puerto Rican cat, Bomb. He was in the Savage Skulls. They had—”
“First of all, your New York accent has increased ten-fold in the last five minutes.” Xenia crowed. “Secondly, what is the savage skulls?”
Saint rolled his eyes. “I thought you had the gang shit on lock down!”
Pissed, Xenia put her finger in his face. “Don’t joke about that, Saint. You know how I feel about this topic. I’m not proud of what I did.”
“Oh baby, I’m just playin’. Seriously though, you don’t know? It’s a gang, well, back then they called it a club, but it was actually a gang. There were a lot of gangs in the Bronx back then, but the ones I hung out with were the Savage Nomads and the Savage Skulls, mostly the Skulls though. To many people, they were bad news but I was just a little kid—they didn’t do anything to me. Back then, gangs had more integrity than these new cats. They pretty much steered clear of harming babies and little kids. The elderly got robbed, but not smoked ... it was mayhem though. Honestly, people act like this shit is new, or started in the ’60s. That’s bullshit. There have been gangs since the beginning of time. Men have fought over land, over turf, since we started to migrate across the globe. There is nothing new about this, but the Bronx put a different twist on it, that’s for sure. ”
“I never thought about it like that, you’re right. And this took place when you lived in the Bronx?”
“Yeah, I lived in the East Morrisania section of the Bronx around Charlotte Street initially. We had to move several times around there because it kept being burnt out, but I’ll get to that in a sec. Anyway, the gangs were everywhere. You either loved or hated them. I ended up loving them and I think that was the final straw. My parents got me outta there.” The sheets rustled when he laid his ankle over hers. “So anyway.” He wiped his nose. “The first time I actually saw, live and in person, people fucking, was with a gang member. I was a little kid and it was happening right in front of me. It was Bomb, the dude I just told you about, and his ol’ lady.”
“What?!” Xenia laughed in disbelief.
“Yeah, they had some of those old buildings no one wanted, half burnt out ’nd shit, occupied. The abandoned buildings were either filled with junkies or gangs, sometimes both. Anyway, there were some rooms set up just for sex, I guess. Back then, there weren’t a lot of girl gang members, but they had a lot of girls with them … so that sparked my interest.” Saint smiled. “You couldn’t get a girl to fuck you, unless you had something to give her back, like some cash, a shirt, some wine, you had to have somethin’. There was always someone else, especially if she was eye candy, if she was hot, that would give her something and back then, that’s just how it was. We were poor, and some people were ashamed to say they were from the South Bronx, but the shit was just grimy. So everybody was out to get theirs, but again, there was respect and if you were a rat or disrespected another, you were in for a beat down and possibly death.”
Xenia nodded and sidled a little closer to him.
“So, I learned that from an early age, but I was the little dude at that time, hanging with these gang members, even though my father forbade me. I did it anyway. That Puerto Rican cat, Bomb, I really looked up to him. He acted like I was his little brother, and took me around. No one knew what the fuck I was.” Saint laughed. “A few of ’em thought I was Puerto Rican but I couldn’t speak Spanish at the time, so they figured it out. Then, they saw my mama, and my dad chased them off, away from our apartment building a few times, and that put all doubts to rest. I’ve gotten off track though so let me double back. Well, one day, Bomb had me up in there and I—”
“Wait, sorry to interrupt you but do you know how he got the name, ‘Bomb’?”
“Because he could go off at anytime and when he did, the shit was explosive. He was a real smart cat, but crazy as fuck. He was good to me though...”
Xenia raised an eyebrow and shook her head.
“Anyway, I couldn’t believe it. I watched him fuck his girl, right? I can’t even tell you, from a six year old’s mind, what that was like. He acted like I wasn’t even in the room. It was sexy. It was raw. They got naked and used this old, filthy ass nasty mattress and I remember looking at her tits. I was completely mesmerized. I had never seen tits before. Well, wait.” He chuckled. “That’s not true; there was this red head prostitute, in retrospect I think it was a wig, but she’d always flash her tits to try to get johns. Anyway, Bomb had this big, curly afro, and all of these home-made tattoos. That was a common look.”
“You know what, Saint? I remember some photos you showed me in one of your old photo albums and one of them was you standing with some guys that looked like that. They were built like track stars.”
“Yeah, if you were running from the police, fighting all day, trying to move fast after robbin’ someone or being hired to burn a building down, you’d have a constant six-pack, too. They were often running for their lives, Xenia. None of us that ran the streets were fat. Poverty meant you just didn’t eat all the time.”
“But like you said, you were one of the few lucky ones because your mother worked at her parents’ grocery store.”
Saint nodded.
Xenia patted his hand. “Tell me more about this Bomb guy you seemed to idolize.”
“He was skinny and tall, like I grew up to be, and all the girls loved him. He was considered really handsome. It was like he was some sort of ghetto rockstar. He was really smart, too, even though he dropped out of school at like, age thirteen. I was so stupid back then, just a kid. I thought it was cool when he said to another guy that he had got a lot of girls pregnant but he didn’t know where those kids were at. It’s sick, in retrospect, but I didn’t know any better. That’s why he was like a role model to me ... crazy as fuck.”
Saint delved deeper into his memories, images of Bomb grabbing rival gang members, slamming their heads against brick walls, stomping others until they coughed blood and shoving a gun so far down another man’s throat, he gagged and threw up. Sometimes Bomb would force Saint to leave, especially if the other gang members were about to go in on someone.
“He knew I was a little kid though, he respected that. He would flip in a nano-second. I saw it enough times and I’ve never met anyone like that since.”
“And you looked up to him because of that?”
“Xenia, I was five when I first met him, maybe, six, going on fifty. Yeah, I didn’t know any better and like I said, to me, he was the baddest mothafucka the Bronx had to offer. You have to understand. Many of these cats didn’t have any parents or if they did, their parents didn’t care where the fuck their kids were. These children—because that’s what they were, Xenia—practically raised themselves. On top of that, they oftentimes stayed high. Yet Bomb could fight his ass off, sober or not. Nobody fucked with him. He showed people that you didn’t have to be muscle-bound to fuck somebody up ... and of course, he had...”
“The girls!” Xenia laughed.
“Right! So, I’m sitting there on that damn floor, watching...”
“You keep not finishing your story. Stay on task!” she teased.
“I know! You keep interrupting me, stop!” He laughed, leaned over and kissed her softly, seductively. They looked at each other for a moment or two before he began again.
“So, this mothafucka fucked this girl, less than three feet away from me.” Saint exhaled a deep breath. “I remember so clearly, the sounds they were making, everything he did to her—it was all so real, so vile, so lovely. The shit was authentic. It was just natural, like he was eating a piece of fruit or taking a walk. He treated it like nothing special, and that made it so unbelievable. That was the beginning, I believe, of how and why I see sex the way I do. It was important. It served a foundation, a healthy one, believe it or not. You know, to me, it’s just a normal part of a person’s life, a normal part of our day, like eating and sleeping—an expectation that has to happen, especially when you’re in love.”
Xenia smiled at him.
“What?” He smiled back.
“I just love it when you talk to me like this.” She ran her finger down the center of his chest. “I love how open you are, how you describe things. It’s one of your best attributes.”
He leaned down into his pillow and once more brushed his lips against hers.
“So, you know, he asked me if I wanted to kiss his girl.” Saint rolled the silky sheets between his thumb and forefinger. “I was real shy around girls, but I did want to kiss her, you know? So she sat up, the girl was probably only like, sixteen, and she walked over to me. I’m looking up at this Puerto Rican chick. She was just a child herself but physically, she looked like a woman … and her fuckin’ bush is right in my damn face and I remember staring at all that fuckin’ black hair between her legs.” He laughed. “This was the ’80s, so you know…”
