Can't Get Enough of Your Love (2 page)

Just kidding. They average maybe one seventy, one eighty each.

And no, I do not entertain them all at once. That can
never
happen, nor is it even one of my fantasies. Okay, I do have the fantasy involving Roger and chocolate whipped topping (the fat-free kind) and the one with Juan Carlos involving long-stem roses. Oh, and one with Karl and some chocolate-covered strawberries, but that's neither here nor there.

When I really think about my situation, I realize that I'm doing all three of my men a favor. I don't require their love and devotion, I don't require a commitment, I don't require their money (just their time), and I don't even require their faithfulness. Why ask a man for what he cannot, does not, or is unwilling to provide? Why ask a man to do what he is not wired or programmed genetically to do?

Oh, I used to want all that commitment stuff, as if my stuff was so good that a man would want only me morning, noon, and night. Four bad relationships in a row after high school taught me otherwise. My stuff
is
good, and I know how to entertain. But the men I was
committed to back then had fifteen-minute (or less) attention spans. Oh, they
said
the right things, like “You're my one and only boo, Lana,” and “Lana, you're my everything,” and “I only want to be with you, Lana,” but their body language always said otherwise. They had one foot out of the bed, one hand grasping a pair of boxers or drawers, and one set of eyes looking for the bathroom, the kitchen, and the exit, usually in that order.

Why three? Why
not
three? Four might be a little hard to juggle. There are only seven days in a week, leaving me six days to entertain and one day to rest. Three men work out just fine. Even God rested after six days, you know.

And Sunday is when Izzie usually shows up. If the world could hear what Izzie and I talk about, we'd be the most scandalous kind of reality TV. But it's not as if my three
amigos
are that consistent and I'm getting some every night. It works out to
maybe
twice a week (just under the national average) with at least one earth-shattering, window-breaking, make-the-bullfrogs-wanna-holler-at-the-moon orgasm. I get their friendship, their warmth, their focus, and then …

They go.

They're gone.

Goodbye.
Adios
. See ya.
Aloha. Ciao
.

Not one of them stays the night, not one of them has a drawer of his very own, not one of them leaves a toothbrush in my bathroom, and not one of them has a special shelf in the refrigerator.

They're here, they're not.

I even use air freshener to cover the scent of their various colognes. I prefer to use Oust, since it completely eliminates their odors.

As a result, I'm never lonely. How can I be lonely when I have
my
space, I
allow
them to invade mine (twice if they're nice), and they're cool with the leaving part? And as far as I can tell, none of my men has grown tired of me.

Friends.

With benefits.

Don't knock it—or
me
—until you put your fantasies to good use and try it.

I
have always had more male friends than female friends, and for that, I can blame my parents.

Earl Davidson and Lana Cole hooked up one foggy night in Norfolk (Nah-Fuck), Virginia, when they were in their early twenties, and made me, Erlana Joy Cole. There has always been more “Earl” in me than “Lana.” As for “Joy,” well, I believe you have to make your own joy in this world, and “Joy” makes an appearance every now and then. I have never been girly enough for my mama or boy enough for my daddy. I'm in between, though I lean Daddy's way. And after twenty-five …
ish
… years (I can still pass for twenty-three on a good day), I realize that my pug nose, wide light brown eyes, and peanut head are not what Mama envisioned when she started messing with my daddy.

Yes, I have a peanut head, and I've grown to be proud of it. Mama had to have a C-section when she had me, and the doctors didn't squish my head down far enough after I was stuck for three hours inside Mama's vagina. They could have molded my head as round as Mama's or made it squarish like Daddy's, but
no—they made me into a peanut. I don't look like either of my parents because of that, and the shit I took from my classmates in elementary school was brutal. They called me “Peanut Head,” “Mrs. Peanut Head,” and “Nutty.” One kid even called me “Mrs. Potato Head,” but he was one of those kids who rode the short bus and also thought he was the black Power Ranger. Eventually, I became “Peanut,” which wasn't so bad except that I wasn't as small as one. I was born big, and I still kind of am. Only Karl calls me “Peanut” now. Roger and Juan Carlos call me “Lana,” though the way Juan Carlos says
“Lahhh
-na” is so much sexier.

My daddy called me “E,” and he was smoof. I mean, any grown man who could watch
The Smurfs
all the way through with me had to be smoof. Daddy had a voice like Sugar Bear from the Super Sugar Crisp commercials and he could mimic Papa Smurf perfectly.

It's smoof to have a daddy who can do that when you're a kid.

After he popped Mama's coochie and popped in and out of my life until I was eight, he popped into thin air, which was hard for him to do. The man was huge and had absolutely no neck—just shoulders and a head with a rectangular jaw, piercing dark brown eyes, a curly kit—and big hands, like a boxer's hands, with big old ashy knuckles. He didn't have a pimp stroll, chains, flared plaid pants, or Adidas sneakers. My daddy wore jeans, a stained hooded gray sweatshirt, and kick-ass black steel-toed boots every day. But that was because of his job as a welder for NorShipCo. He'd come home with dirty nails, dirt streaks on his face, and the smell of the sea mixed with sweat and Hai Karate aftershave after working on Navy ships, cruise ships, and even long oil tankers. He would take me to a park near his
house on West 29th Street (when
The Smurfs
weren't on), and we would play football.

Tackle football.

And my daddy hit
hard
.

I didn't actually tackle him—you know, take him completely down—until I was seven, and I didn't score a touchdown on him until I was eight. Four years of shutouts, tears, bruises, cuts, and Band-Aids. Mama didn't like it, mainly because my teachers were forever calling home to accuse her of child abuse, but
I
loved it. I
lived
football, and I know more about football than most guys do. I can tell you the results from every Super Bowl since 1982. I know the difference between an H-back and a cornerback. I know that a cover two isn't what a bra does to your girls, I can tell if it's going to be a pass play just by watching the guards pull or stay home, and I have a pass-rushing swim move that would make any defensive end in the NFL green with envy.

I even play semi-pro football for the Roanoke Revenge in the National Women's Football Association. That's right. We're women wearing pads more than once a month, but only in the springtime. We don't get a paycheck—and we actually have to buy our own equipment—but at least I get to play the sport I love.

And no, I am not a wide receiver. I am a defensive end and tight end (and it
is
true!) on a lesbian team of white women ranging in age from eighteen to fifty. I am five nine and one hundred sixty pounds of black muscle, and no one says a damn thing about my peanut head when I have my helmet on.

Oh, the Revenge are horrible this year. We're 1–5 after
two
70–0 losses to the D.C. Divas, two butt-kickings by
the Pittsburgh Passion, and a thrashing by the Baltimore Burn. But I put my hand in the dirt, I get in my licks, I break some kneecaps, and I swim move and get my sacks. And if our prima donna quarterback would pass the ball to me more than to the women she wants to sixty-nine with, we might actually score a few more touchdowns before the season (mercifully) ends against the Erie Illusion, the only team worse than we are. That probably makes Erie the worst team ever to play professional football in American history.

Playing for the Revenge is like playing one-on-one football with my daddy. We'll be down 40–0 before halftime sometimes, beaten, bloody, and gasping for oxygen, but we have heart. Though we really,
really
want to sneak away at halftime to spare the fans any more misery, we always go back out for the second half, and (thank God!) no one has scored triple-digits on us.

Yet.

I think I'm the only heterosexual on the team. I have been hit-on by almost every player, not that there's anything wrong with it. Live and let live, right? I mean, I entertain three men. So what if they entertain each other. Big deal. What I don't understand is that I'm not a “dime” (Who thought up that shit? You can't get anything with a dime now!), yet I get these looks from my teammates, even while we run through drills at practice. Imagine seeing a big white woman wearing shoulder pads, elbow pads, and knee pads, and with black grease marks under her eyes. That's scary enough. Now imagine those grease-painted eyes making eyes at
you
during a tackling drill. I take these looks as compliments, and then I take my butt
home
completely
clothed and sweaty instead of hitting the showers after a practice or a game. I've seen those women-in-prison movies. I know what could happen.

Izzie wants me to hang around after practice, just to see what
might
happen.

Izzie's such a perv.

I don't think I'm that pretty. For one thing, I have big feet and long toes, and you know what they say about women who have big feet and long toes—they go through lots of socks and hose. I'm well proportioned, not ripped, with long fingers, too.

Most people who look at me see a basketball player, but I cannot stand an orange ball that bounces straight up. I need the brown ball that bounces funny. Sure, coaches in high school tried to recruit me to play basketball for them, but basketball isn't for me. I once fouled out of a pickup game in gym class in only
two
minutes. And they play basketball indoors for the most part.

I need grass, dirt, and chalk lines.

I also need a struggle. Basketball isn't much of a struggle. If you break it down, basketball is all about five people playing keep-away against five other people who are trying
not
to touch them. I can't play a sport in which I can't physically abuse the enemy, grinding, grunting, and grabbing, trash talking, cussing, scratching, gouging, poking, plucking, chasing, diving, and crunching. Football to me is a human symphony involving lots of percussion, while basketball is more like a squeaky dance with an occasional “swish.” I mean, in basketball you actually get to score without any interference when you shoot a free throw.

There isn't anything free in football.

You have to earn every inch with blood, sweat, and
guts. So instead of popping a J or making a breakaway layup, I grab me some dirt, and as soon as the center moves the ball, I'm going to turn the player in front of me into a human bruise, sack me a lesbian with bad hair and worse skin, and make bowlegged women limp worse.

So, after tackling other women and not catching
any
passes (football or otherwise) from other women, I go home to my little plot of paradise on a tiny little pond in Bedford County just east of Roanoke, Virginia. The pond is so tiny it doesn't even have a name.

I just call it “Mine.”

W
hen Mama and I first came to Roanoke fifteen years ago so she could take a job with First Virginia (which became First Union, then Wachovia), I thought the real reason we came was so she could steal me away from my daddy, one-on-one tackle football, and easy trips to the beach. I also thought Roanoke was a boring city in the mountains.

Now, I think Roanoke is a boring, small-minded
town
masquerading as a city full of folks who occasionally notice that, indeed, there are mountains all around them. And the only beaches around here are the sons-of-beaches driving to and through the parking lots of Valley View Mall, which is a
stupid
name for a mall
surrounded
by mountains. They should have called it Mountain View Mall, but since folks around here don't see the mountains anymore …

We lived near Towers Mall on Colonial Avenue, an extremely busy street, in a three-bedroom ranch with a huge basement, decent backyard for Mama's flowers, and a deck out back. We weren't in the ‘hood, so I went to elementary and middle school with a bunch of white
kids before getting to Patrick Henry High School, where I finally was allowed to be black.

I earned an associate's degree from Virginia Western Community College after high school so I could be a legal assistant, which I will
never
be. Paper pushing is
not
for me. So, I took a job as an instructional aide for special education students at Patrick Henry, mainly so I could have my summers off. But after living too long in the city under Mama's watchful eyes and worrisome mouth, I had to get out of Roanoke, mainly so I could save money on gas. It isn't cheap going from one friend-with-benefit's place to the next. I needed a place of my own so
they
could come to
me
.

As it should be, right?

Who am I kidding? I was paranoid and needed my own place away from Roanoke so my men would never accidentally meet. I needed to control the situation, all right? I had had too many close calls, most of them involving my cell phone. At first, I kept it on vibrate, but one night with Roger, it buzzed so often that I had to return the call “to my mama,” who was really Karl wanting to get a leg up. I hated lying to Roger, especially when he heard me say: “I'll be there soon, boo.” I then had to explain why I called my mama “boo,” and that wasn't any fun. Now I keep my cell off when I'm with one of them and on at all other times.