“I know. I know. But it’s not that cut and dried. Look at me. I managed to find a job, and not scrubbing floors or doing some white lady’s ironing, either. I work at what I was trained to do, and I’m happy at my work. The people I work with respect me, too. If only you’d keep trying, it could work out the same for you.”
“No thanks. I don’t want to be Columbia University’s nigger. I’d rather push an elevator.”
“You don’t mean that, Frank. You don’t really believe that’s all I am.”
“No.” He was contrite. “I guess I don’t. I didn’t mean to sound off that way. I guess the truth is it gripes me that you make twice as much money—more, in fact-—as I do. It bothers me that my wife’s got all the status in the family. And I guess, what really burns me is that it’s so typical. It’s all part of the pattern. The world castrates the Negro man, and so the woman takes over as head of the family. Employment doors get slammed in the man’s face, but their tongues are hanging out for a black girl to come clean their houses. You figure that if you sweat out an education, it won’t work out that way. But you can’t beat the system. They pat you on your kinky head for getting a diploma, and while they’re doing it, their other hand’s busy tearing out your gonads by the roots all the same."
“You still have yours, Frank.”
“Thanks. But we know better than that, don’t we?
“No, we certainly don’t! Why can't you admit that our sex problem’s mostly me? Oh, you may have something to do with it, but the fact that I can’t respond to you sexually is mostly my problem. That’s why, I’m in therapy.”
“Do you really think it’s helping you, Gloria?” His tone was earnest now, not sarcastic.
“Yes. I really think it is. I can feel that I’m getting better. I can feel that I’m more capable of responding to you. Some nights I’m so close . . . so close . . . ”
“And tonight?” Frank put his arms around her and looked down into her eyes tenderly.
“When you touch me and look at me like that, I just know I can make it.”
“Could you make it tonight?”
“Oh, Frank, I don’t know.” She was trembling in his arms. “I think so. The way I feel now, I just know I can. Only -”
He cut off her words with a kiss. She felt the muscles of his slender body tighten as their tongues met and she moaned deep in her throat. When the kiss was over, he picked her up in his arms and carried her toward the bedroom.
“Frank!” she squealed. “Put me down, you maniac. I can walk.”
“I’m a hot black buck and I can’t control my animal impulses. It’s rape for you, missy.”
“Ooh, promise?”
“If I’m only ten percent as good as the way a white lady looked at me in the elevator today, you’re in for a savage mating there, my Swahili maiden. The way she squeezed her fat legs together, all it takes is a look from my jungle-hot eyes and wham! I tell you, I’m just a sex-mad brute!”
“Well, brute, it must have been her husband who was undressing me on the subway coming home. Poor man, the way he was eyeing me, I just know he felt he wasn’t up to coping with my basic, uncontrollable, erotic appetites. You could see on his face that he just knew I'd be too much for him. Only an outsize buck like you can put out my fire.”
“I got the hose all ready and waiting.”
They both laughed.
“Isn’t it a caution how that’s the one thing the whites envy us for, and really there's no truth in it at all?” Gloria asked.
“That’s their problem. And it serves them right. But the hell with them. And enough of this unseemly levity. I’m about to make serious love to you. That is, if you’ll oblige me by getting out of your clothes.”
“Gladly.” Gloria got up from the bed where he'd dropped her and began to undress.
Frank watched her appreciatively. She took off her dress and hung it neatly on a hanger in the closet. Her smooth skin gleamed satin-black against the white slip she was wearing. She sat on the edge of the bed and rook off her shoes. Then she raised one leg in the air to roll down her stocking. A small smile crossed Frank's face. He loved Gloria’s legs. They were so long and slender, yet so erotically curved.
Then she stood and pulled her slip off over her head. As she folded it he admired the compact, feminine figure in bra and panties. He loved the way her hips arched out from her tiny waist, the way her small, high, perfectly formed breasts thrust upwards as if trying to escape the confines of her brassiere.
Gloria smiled at him impishly as she reached behind her for the bra clasp. The smile widened as she heard him catch his breath at the sight of her naked breasts bubbling slightly, their red tips taut and hungry in the center of the firm, black roundness. She pushed her panties down her hips slowly, sensually, turning away from him so that he might see her firm, sculpted derriere as it was presented to view. She turned around and posed for him naked a moment. Then she went to the closet and took out her gold nightgown—sheer and clinging; Frank’s favorite — put it on and got into bed.
He turned out the light, quickly pulled off his clothes, and joined her. Gloria’s body did indeed burn as he embraced her. Her lips were moist and eager on his, and her nipples were hard as twin cherrystones against his chest.
Through the thin material of the nightgown, Frank felt her legs begin to move. Her hips arched and her thighs parted as she searched out the fulcrum of his body. She moved against him anxiously, straining backward to feel the hard muscles of his belly pressed against hers.
The nightgown strap slipped from her shoulder and one of her breasts, shaped like an ice-cream cone, was exposed. Frank fastened his mouth on it and Gloria dug her nails into the back of his neck as his tongue moved over the tip. Her whole body trembled spasmodically as she tugged at the waist of her nightie to pull it up over her waist and hips. She took his hand and pressed it to her womanhood, stroking the back of it to establish the rhythm by which she wished him to caress her. Then her hand slid over his stomach and she moaned as her fist encircled him.
They remained like that for a while, playing with each other, letting their desire mount. Finally Gloria could stand this teasing no longer. She rose up on her knees and pulled off the nightgown. And then she moved over Frank, first with her eyes staring hotly into his, then with her swaying breasts grazing his face as she lowered herself to the contact for which she yearned.
His hips rose from the bed to meet her. His hands clasped over her back as he pulled her forward so that his lips might again pressed kisses over her free-swinging bosom. He stroked her flanks slowly, letting Gloria squirm until the pressure of his upthrusting loins was exactly where she wanted it. Then he increased the tempo, feeling the warmth of her response and the fever of her flesh on his.
First he rose to her with small circling motions, then, as her moans grew louder, he switched to deep, pulsating thrusts and she laughed aloud with pleasure. Deliberately, Frank contracted his muscles, restrained himself, held back until Gloria should tell him that she was ready for the ultimate joy. He waited as long as he could, and then-—
“Now?” he asked hoarsely, using all his will power and restraint to delay the final moment.
“No. Wait. Just a moment. Just one moment more.”
“Now?” he asked again a moment later as he felt his determination slipping away into the uncontrollable beginning spasms.
“Oh, wait! Wait! Please!“
And a moment later—“Now! I can’t stop it! Now, darling! Now Now Now!”
“But I'm not—” Gloria panted.
It was too late. Frank took her with all the strength and frustration he’d kept bottled up in him. His body pushed hers toward the ceiling with one last, mighty thrust, and then it was over.