Rion Amilcar Scott
Some dudes get all the pussy.
Take my man Dusty. We used to go to the clubs together and hang real tight when life was all college and part-time jobs and staying out real late. He would go up to broads on the street and say one or two things and then they’d find some spot and do their thing.
Later, he’d tell me all about it. I thought it was bullshit too, but I lived with the dude for two years after college. Yeah, some dudes get all the pussy. Back then I would wear these tighty-whitey drawers to sleep. Don’t ask me why. Once I came out in the middle of the night to pee and ran into one of his broads. Later found out she was a friend of my sister’s. Never been so embarrassed. I done fucked one woman in my life. Married her. Some sad shit, really. I’m not religious. Tried to whore around, but Dusty said when I spoke to a broad I always sabotaged myself. Used to come in like a joker. Say some funny shit. Make them laugh. Humor was originally a mating tactic, right? Not no more. They thought I was funny, but they never wanted to fuck me. Dusty said some shit to me one time that fucked up my head. He said, You ever find a clown sexy? I haven’t. No one else has either.
This one chick said she was in a relationship. That’s how she was trying to blow me off. I said, Me too. I wasn’t in a relationship. I thought she’d laugh and re-think not wanting to talk to me. At the very least we could have some phone conversations and I’d learn about life. Naw. She stared at me real solemn like she was sad for me and said, Then you need to be more honest with that woman. The way she looked at me was real soulful, man. Like she had drowned over and over in thick black rivers of hurt or something. I started to feel bad for the imaginary chick I was trying to cheat on. For a long time I thought of myself as some shit on the bottom of deep tread boots.
And the things Dusty be saying to women. Hey Fatty Boom-Boom come talk to me, girl. They find all that stuff endearing. Well, sometimes. He gets called an asshole a lot. That dude is an asshole to tell you the truth. I love him like I love my big brother though. Saying vulgar shit has worked for him. I don’t know why. And then sometimes he’s not vulgar. Sometimes he comes in smooth and calm and friendly. Told me once, You got to look at the little cues they giving off. Figure out what they like. What they missing in life and then you be that.
That’s something I could never figure out.
He got this thing he does. He whistles like an old man. Like Bigsby Wolf in them old Warner Brothers cartoons. We called him Bigsby for a while, but that didn’t take. That whistle worked like shit.
I got this friend. She’s a fatty boom-boom. Girl got good geometry. Well-endowed in the back. Don’t matter what she wear someone always got something to say. What you think something like that does to a woman’s mental state? She’s always pissed about it. Comes into work like she just run a groping line. They don’t touch, usually. But yelling bitch when she don’t talk and commenting on her ass and making jokes and slapping five and eyefucking, it accumulates. I listen. I admit in the old days Dusty done some bitch calling, but he grew from that. Says that’s young boy shit. Now he says, They don’t want to fuck me, I find a bird that do.
I never liked the bitch calling.
But my friend, Fatty Boom-Boom, she won’t fuck me either. I never tried, I know though. I don’t know if I’d even know how to fuck a broad who wasn’t my wife. Fatty comes in exasperated one day. And she tells me, as she does sometimes, that in her younger days she used to get it on, not indiscriminately or randomly, but more freely with dudes. Not just dudes she was seeing but one-time things with dudes from the club or the gym or class. Even dudes who approached her on the streets. Respectful dudes, she said. None of them wolf-whistling-eyefucking-ass-commenting-bitch-calling types. I tell her about Dusty again. She calls him the Whistling Wolf, like the big wolf that all the wolf hunters down in the Wildlands is looking for—they say The Whistling Wolf hunts during the day and looks to take babies from prams and you never see him, but you might hear his whistle before he attacks and as he escapes. She says my man’s nickname with disgust and righteous fury, but then we start comparing notes and I’m like yes he’s tall, about 6’7 and yes some of his bottom teeth are crooked, and yes, back in the day he did have cornrows for a brief period, but he cut that shit off. Fuck. Some dudes get all the pussy. I look at her geometric curves and I whistle playfully. To kill the Whistling Wolf would bring prestige, but they say you don’t kill him, he seduces you with his whistle and takes what he wants. I whistle again while she turns and her hips bounce as she shakes them playfully and mockingly. I whistle again. A joke. But it sounds sad to me.
Rion Amilcar Scott has contributed to PANK, Fiction International, and Confrontation, among others. Raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, he earned an MFA at George Mason University and presently teaches English at Bowie State University.
