Chapter 5 – Donna Davis

So, that's what it is with him. It wasn't me. I was making a fool of myself just giving myself to him like that, and it turns out he twists another way. Too bad, he's a real looker.

I was sitting in the outdoor section at the General's Café with the regulars on Pulaski Square, enjoying the unseasonably warm weather to kick off April, and Caleb had just plowed through—all loud accusations, although I can't be faulted for not paying attention to what they were because I was preoccupied by how sexy he was—and had been coaxed into the interior of the café by Mr. Tinley. I was being as casual about being here for the first time with Mark since he'd finally fucked me and then just run off and hadn't contacted me since.

Mark—I liked to call him Paul—was a good fuck. Nice hard body—not anything like Caleb's, of course, but nice in his own way. And nicely hung. Again, nothing like Caleb, of course, but without the cockiness and roughness Caleb could display.

But I could tell that Mark was holding back when he fucked me in the laundry room, just as he'd done when I lured him into the apartment before that.

Well, I thought that was OK, if a bit deflating. But it also made me think. Guys—and some girls—at this, I looked over at Tracy, but she was talking with Mark's live-in, Kathy, which was fine with me—had treated me like an easy bimbo for so long that I realized, when it didn't click with Mark, that, fool that I'd been, I had fallen into that role.

But Mark had been different from most guys. I really wanted it with Mark. It wasn't just that he was a hunk and a half young Paul Newman double and a nice guy to boot. It was because he had looked beyond my surface and had shown interest in the deeper me and in my work. No one else honed into my work as a cartoonist. Not even Tracy could sustain interest in it, and she was doing everything she could to impress me.

When I said I was a cartoonist—a political satirist—most just smiled and looked down into my cleavage, bedding me on their mind, and just let my art interests float over their heads. Not Mark. Maybe it was the feminine streak I saw in him. For most that would be a turnoff. But for me it was different and intriguing. I really wanted to know how it would be to be fucked by a sensitive guy. It had been OK. More than OK. The black panties and bra were a surprise—but an interesting one. This was an art colony. I was as open-minded as the next person.

But Mark had backed right off. Now I knew why—and it wasn't just a cross-dressing fetish.

I knew that the novelist Terrence Rowland, who lived on the west side of the square and who was at the café that day was gay. It was the first time I'd seen him anywhere but taking constitutional strolls around the square, all dapper and slim height. He was turned from us all, though, and not participating in either of the conversations. He wasn't tuned into either the lively one of the younger crowd in the center of the café or the one Ms. Goodwin, the queen bee of the square, was holding in her usual corner with her usual serfs. I'd heard all the rumors about the marriage between those two dinosaurs, Rowland and Goodwin, being broken up by his sexuality. And I knew what he had going for the young, quiet black porter from over at the hotel, Jaivon Johnson. I thought Rowland was turned away from us because he was watching Caleb working, shirtless, in the gardens in the square. Good luck to him there, I thought, knowing full well why there was no hope for him in that direction.

And now, as I caught glimpses of him turning in his chair and looking at and smiling at Mark—who was returning the smiles—I knew what he wanted from Mark and what Mark wanted to give him in return.

I realized now that when Mark had fucked me in the apartment house laundry room when I had enticed him there, it was a Mark who was struggling with his sexuality. Well, no, not with that, I don't think. I think Mark realized what he wanted. I think he was struggling with getting what he wanted without upsetting the apple cart of how he wanted others to see him.

When Mr. Rowland stood from his table at the café, he looked around at Mark. I think he expected Mark to follow him. And when I looked at Mark, I thought he might. But he didn't. I remember feeling a bit sad then for both of them. But two days later, when I looked out of our living room window into the square to admire the flowers Caleb was planting to the beds there—and, yes, to admire the shirtless Caleb as well—I saw Mr. Rowland sit down on a bench beside Mark briefly. I did a little incantation for them in my mind, and then was cheered to see them rise, walk away together, and enter Mr. Rowland's house. I think I'm as open-minded as the next person. I hoped they both were getting what they wanted—and needed—behind those shuttered windows of the formidable Rowland castle.

Mark seemed genuinely fond of Kathy Kimbel, the woman he was living with. But in the short time I'd known them, I didn't think he was comfortable with her. Well, I liked him . . . still. And hoped him well in finding what he wanted. That was easier for me because I didn't think Kathy was comfortable with the arrangement either.

I had every reason to know what Kathy wanted, even though she tried hard to hide it—and to fight it. Just the way she looked at me from time to time and the way she was reacting to her conversation with Tracy at the café and Tracy's reaction to her told me everything I needed to know about that. About both of them.

I knew exactly what Tracy was interested in in terms of a sex partner. There were nights when she entered my bedroom in the dark, pulled the covers off me where I slept in the nude, and worked her hands and mouth down my body. I always let her have her way with me in those nights. She could induce an orgasm as well as any man I'd laid with. And she was good to me in the rest of our living arrangements. Not that we ever spoke of her visits to my bed in the night.

The sex with her—more from her—was not disturbing to me. I took such pleasuring of my body from wherever I could get it and from whomever attracted me. I made no bones about being bisexual. What was becoming disturbing to me was her efforts to merge into being me. She couldn't do it fully, of course. I was petite and slim and she was more of an athletic build. But she increasingly was effecting my mannerisms and speech patterns, and as we met at the café that day, I saw that she had had her hair colored and cut to match mine.

So, when she showed more interest in talking with Kathy at the café than to me, I was relieved. She was getting close to smothering me. I would encourage her interest in Kathy. Kathy needed Tracy more than I did, I thought. I wouldn't be here long. I was peddling my cartoon portfolio around to the syndicates. I knew the cartoons were good. My course at SCAD was just about completed. It was time for me to be something other than the easy bimbo.

And, as long as I was here, I found my ultimate satisfaction in Caleb Freeman, the landscaper.

We usually met at the carpenter shop he kept in the old carriage house behind Ms. Goodwin's house. He had it fully outfitted as a shop and, behind a carved screen he'd made himself, he kept a double bed for trysts with the few women he let into his world. Not that he only fucked a few women—but I didn't know any other than me who knew about his carpentry workshop.

I believe I was one of only a few on the square who knew he was a master furniture maker. His furniture, all to his own studied designs, was worthy of the SCAD training that also very few knew he had. He hid well that he had a college degree. I think his hunky black landscaper persona got him into more women's panties than being a trained master furniture maker would have.

I perhaps was one of only a few who also knew that he spent his nights in Ms. Goodwin's bed—servicing her in exchange for room and board and full use of the carriage house. Certainly no one would have known that from the way she treated the man during the day—like an untouchable and a black field hand from the years before what she also referred to as the War of Northern Aggression on the South. I don't think he was fully mercenary there. He took who he wanted and would, I thought, always find a way to get what he wanted. In some complex way, I think he enjoyed fucking her.

I knew he was a womanizer and would screw any who would let him—and most any woman would let him. But I was confident that he would always want to screw me. And he did it superbly. I was so small and he was so large. I enjoyed watching as he entered me. He always was in awe that he could.

"It amazes me each time, darlin'," he'd say each time, "that you can take me in so easily. You're just like a china doll. I'm always afraid I'll break you. But you take me, such a large dick in such a tiny hole, and stay with me every time."

It was the china doll fucked by a hulking, hung black bull that always did it for me. He always did it for me, and I didn't resent who else he was doing it for as well. This was just a passing phase for me. In my next life—my syndicated cartoonist life to come—I'd be something else altogether. Probably a hard-nosed businesswoman in severe, mannish clothes.

For now I would play my role as blonde bimbo and just enjoy the pleasure that both Tracy and Caleb gave me—and try not to regret that Mark had slipped out of my hands—and into Terrence Rowland's bed. At least Mark had seen deeper into me than the easy fool image.