“Yes, I was incarcerated for drug related charges. I’m not a user. Never smoked, snorted, or shot up crack, cocaine, meth, heroin, fentanyl, none of that shit, a day in my life. I never even took pills, rarely popped an aspirin. I used to smoke weed on the regular, but stopped due to my job, plus, it makes me sleepy, so I needed to cut that out anyway. My productivity would go down. I like to drink though.”
“So, you’re a dope boy?”
“Nope. Iwasa dope boy. I was damn good at the shit, too. Had a lot of respect behind my name. The Louisville Metro Department of Corrections knows me well. I’ve had so much money, Desiree, that at one point in time, I could have bought practically anything I wanted in the city. I’ve been so broke, that I have looked for spare change in my couch, tryna scrounge around for enough to get a loosey and a can of Coke. So, I’ve been real high on the mountain, baby, and real low in the valley. Most of it self-imposed. I made those choices, so I had to deal with the consequences.
“I’m taking accountability. Something I ran from before. It was always someone else’s fault why shit turned out bad for me.” He briefly closed his eyes, and ran his hands over his face. “As a kid that holds water, but as a grown man, it’s not even close. That’s not satisfactory. I will say this, though… when I decide to stop doing something, to change my behavior, I mean, really choose a new path, I put my all into it. I don’t want to go back to that lifestyle. The money was good, and I liked the fast life, the fast cars, and the fast women, but in the end, it cost me my freedom. It hurt my friendships. Myrealfriendships. It cost me too much time away from doing the things I could’ve been working on. I used it as a crutch. I have to stand up on my own two feet.”
He raised his chin high, smoked, and released the ashes again. “I have absolutely no problem turning a new leaf and doing the right thing, but it has to be my choice, and my choice alone.”
“Are you tryna convince me or yourself of that?”
“I reckon both. But it’s the truth. I can’t be manipulated. Trapped. Conned. Led astray. I’ve seen too much shit in my lifetime that would bring a lot of men to their knees, and I’ve pulled too many ruses on people, to not peep game when it’s in my face. I’m one of the most strong-minded men you’ll ever meet, Desiree. Opinions mean nothin’ to me. When I say I am going to do something, I do it, good or bad. When I set my sights on something, nine times out of ten, I get it. It might not be right away, but I’m like a dog wit’ a bone. Never letting go. I see something in front of me right this motherfuckin’ second that I want.” His eyes hooded as he took a long, hard draw on his cigarette. “And I plan to get her—come low, fiery hell, or flooding high water. Church.”
Her complexion reddened as he looked straight through her.
“You’re focused on your goals now, and they’re positive for a change.” She swallowed.
“Definitely. So with all of that said, don’t tell me that I can’t give a woman what she needs. I choose if I will or won’t. It’s just that simple.” He leaned forward and took a taste of his wine.
“You speak like a Southern Black man that’s been raised in the projects, Legend. And then I look at you and can’t believe you sound like this. I’m sorry, but this shit is lightweight funny.” She burst out laughing, cracking up hard, and he couldn’t help following suit.
He shrugged. “Well, it is what it is. I sound just like my daddy. He spoke the same way. Even when he was speaking in Spanish. When we talk now, which is only every now and again, I can hear the similarities.” He ran his hand across his mouth and looked absently behind him, then turned to her again.
“You have a gun on you?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I saw the bulge.” His brow raised. “No! I mean, like, the lump on the side of your hip. I thought felons aren’t allowed to have guns?”
“We’re not.”
She looked at him for a moment, then picked up the remote.
“What do you want to watch?”
“I don’t care about this TV, baby. I’m just enjoying talking to you.”
“I like talking to you, too.” Running her fingers through her hair, she cocked her head to one side and studied him. He liked that, how she was looking at him as though she’d caught him viewing her in a different light.
“I want to go back to when you brought up loyalty the other day. What does loyalty mean to you?” She brought both legs onto the couch now, bringing her knees up to her chin.
“What does loyalty mean to me?” He contemplated the question for a bit. “Well, instead of giving you a definition, I’ll just tell you who I am as far as loyalty is concerned.” She nodded in understanding. “I’m loyal to my friends. I’m loyal to people who are loyal to me.”
“What about women? Relationships? You said you can be when you choose to be, but are you naturally?’
“Now, here we are again. You said you didn’t want that position in my life, so why do you care?”
“I don’t. I’m just curious.”
“Again, I’ve been loyal when Iwantedto be. Faithful. Am I naturally faithful? I don’t think anyone is. It’s something we have to decide and then do, and stick by that.”
“How can you say that?”
“How can I say we’re not naturally faithful? Easily. We’re just not monogamous by design. That is a fairytale. If we were, men could only get one woman pregnant at a time, and women could only get pregnant by one man, and that would be the end of it. There are other animals in the animal kingdom that are designed for monogamy. We’re not one of them. Instead, you can literally have twins with two different fathers, and the strongest sperm survives to fertilize the egg. That means that one man’s sperm, can fight with another man’s sperm, if they both fuck the same woman during her fertile window. It wouldn’t be set up like that if we were supposed to never be with anyone else.”
“That’s not proof of that, Legend. It just means that if someone’s spouse dies, or there is a genetic problem with the person we’re pregnant by, then having more than one option to procreate increases our chances, as human beings, of still being able to populate the Earth with strong, viable children.”
“Nice theory, but not true. This one-woman, one-man shit is a big ass lie, propagated by religion and the government. It hasits advantages, don’t get me wrong, but at the core of it all, we’re beasts. You. Me. Everyone. Sex is just as much for enjoyment as it is to continue the species. Some animals don’t even have orgasms, but we do. That means we’re supposed to experience this with many different people. Puritan views have muddied the waters. Turned sex into something dirty and bad.”