In Search of Pretty Young Black Men Read online

  Also by Stanley Bennett Clay

  Diva: A Novel

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2001, 2005 by Stanley Bennett Clay

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce

  this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Atria Books, 1230 Avenue

  of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-1309-4

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-1309-4

  First Atria Books hardcover edition January 2005

  ATRIA BOOKS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  for Reny

  Los Angeles is wonderful. Nowhere in the United States is the Negro so well and beautifully housed, nor the average efficiency and intelligence in the colored population so high…. Out here in this matchless Southern California there would seem to be no limit to your opportunities, your possibilities.

  —W. E. B. DU BOIS, 1913

  Prologue

  July 2, 1985, was a typical day in Los Angeles. The sun was bright, the air was dry, and seasonal fires routinely scourged wilderness reserves and affluent hilltop enclaves all throughout the county. On this day in Baldwin Hills, fifty-three well-appointed homes and three well-placed citizens were consumed by flames, aided and abetted by Santa Ana winds. The tragic event played out nonstop on special afternoon news reports—or misreports—on every local station. Journalists reported from helicopters the flight of several black domestic workers to the streets from their employers’ torched Baldwin Hills dwellings. No one stopped to notice that the white homeowners, the so-called employers, were nowhere to be found. For what the reporters of 1985 Los Angeles did not know, and would for many seasons be embarrassed by, was that the fleeing black domestics were not the domestics at all. They were not the chauffeurs, gardeners, housekeepers, and nannies. They were indeed the owners of the manors sent up in flames.

  In the early 1980s Baldwin Hills was L.A.’s best-kept secret; a hilltop community of black wealth. Up until that tragic day little was known about Baldwin Hills. Baldwin Hills was the quiet and well-behaved baby sister of such high-profile communities as Beverly Hills, Hollywood Hills, Brent-wood, Westwood, Hancock Park, and Malibu.

  Baldwin Hills was where muffled black pride, discreet black money, and relentless black reserve went hand in hand in hand. It’s where sun-colored Creoles, blue-black Geechese, accentless Jamaicans of means, and Harvard-educated descendants of enterprising sharecroppers lorded over siesta-style mansionettes kept beautiful and clean by those next in line.

  In Baldwin Hills caramel daughters stretched out by calm swimming pools and contemplated last year’s affair, the usual pilgrimage to the islands, and Wanda Coleman’s latest collection of urban poetry. In Baldwin Hills Dom Perignon washed down hot-buttered grits and everyone lived on one of the Dons. That was very important; almost as important as knowing how and when to be a Huxtable.

  Fires come and go in Southern California. That’s just the nature of the paradise. But the last thing the good black people of Baldwin Hills needed was a too close examination of who they were and why.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  She had had her taste of men. In fact, she had had her fill of them. She had been married to the same Lamont Lester-Allegro for some twenty odd years. But her stretch, long and checkered, as a stool warmer at too many hedonistic haunts tailor-made for single black Baldwin Hills bourgies was a smoky testament to her dissatisfaction on the home front. Although her outings usually proved anemic they were frequent enough to cause her older best friend and fellow barfly, Elaine, to jokingly snap-read, “You should get out less.”

  She couldn’t agree more. But she did truly enjoy her addiction to the candy-store view of pretty young black men at bargain time. This was when sophisticated soul sisters—stripped of their ladyisms and armored with their charge cards, condoms, and Slauson Arms motel room keys—pushed and shoved past her to have the dark, fresh, and fleshy goods displayed before them.

  It was 1989, spring; maybe summer, and every evening, after her NAACP meetings and Links teas and before her bid whist games with Lydia, Arleta, and Elaine, Maggie Lester-Allegro found herself propped up on her favorite stool at Nuts ’n’ Bolts without any awareness of how she got there and no recollection of any prethought in the matter of the vigil. She only knew that she was in automatic drive.

  She licked the chilly salt rim of her double margarita and checked out the dim room full of pirates and treasures.

  The incongruity of her physical presence among these “other” sisters—baby sisters, pimpled spinsterettes of the happy hour playing in their mothers’ high heels, beads, and lipstick, was not lost on her. She smiled in mock deference for she knew that those who filled her immediate surroundings were classes below her in style, looks, and attitude.

  She was reminiscent of Diana Ross—all eyes, shoulders, and a hair-weave cascade—and sometimes she seemed to carry herself like some grand mystic bush queen. But more often than not she would slip loosely from her dark, regal stance, like on this occasion as she licked too desperately at the chilly salt rim of her cocktail.

  Maggie Lester-Allegro came across like the kind of woman who should have been called by her formal given slave name, Margaret, as in “Oh, Maaaaaahgret daaaaahling!” and she seemed like someone who should have been a heavy frequenter of the old Perino’s on Wilshire Boulevard during its heyday back in the 1930s when it was the sacred trough to platinum stars.

  But the new piss-elegant Nuts ’n’ Bolts in the Baldwin Hills Plaza was where she hung. Hung. Hung drunkenly and conspicuously like some antique drape in a neon setting. Hung. Hung as in “hung around,” as in, “Is it time for me to die?”

  You see, Maggie Lester-Allegro had long ago resigned herself to her husband’s neglect, knowing that she was merely one of his many trophies acquired seasons ago and left upon a dusty mantel of prominence. After all, Lamont Lester-Allegro had family legacy to live up to and personal demons to live down. Lester-Allegros were known for being the first black everything that could be distinguished by being the first black anything in a world that relished firsts. Doctor Lamont Lester-Allegro, a third-generation Lester-Allegro, was known for only that: being a Lester-Allegro, one of no particular distinction, merely a hanger-on by blood.

  As Maggie sat at the bar perusing the trade, she recalled with liquor-heavy smirks and moans the night Queen of Outer Space played on the Z channel and Lamont insisted on watching it even though HBO was airing Lady Sings the Blues. Zsa Zsa over Miss Ross? Oh please! Maggie could only credit the choice to her husband’s sense of taste when faced with camp, and yet…

  “Now that’s a real woman!” Lamont had said ogling the TV monitor while a young Zsa Zsa broke English and his proper Negro heart.

  Maggie fluffed it off—or seemed to—especially in light of the fact that he had confessed after a night of too much Courvoisier and cocaine that he once let a gorgeous brick-house, during his cum-too-quick college youth, suck him off like some rimmed Tootsie Roll pop. But the drop-dead brick-house turned out to be a drop-dead drag queen with enough dick of her own to hog-tie a judge. So what did he, Lamont, know about a real woman, much less appreciating one? Alas, this was how Miss Maggie Arial Lester-Allegro justified her more-than-occasional pilgrima
ge to the bar called Nuts ’n’ Bolts.

  She had ordered another double margarita. Just as Shabaka-Letrice, the waitress, set it down in front of her, she thought she saw Dorian Moore—beautiful Dorian Moore—reflected in the mirror behind the bar. She held back her startle when she realized that the only face staring back at her that she even remotely found of sentimental interest was her own. What she had thought was him was only the recollection of him, a recollection that flashed brightly in her lazy bloodshot eyes.

  He was just a boy, a black-as-midnight boy with black-as-midnight eyes surrounded by thick black lashes languid enough and groomed enough to sweep stardust aside. He had sparkling white teeth framed by lips made full enough to tell a thousand lies.

  She sipped at her drink and felt a warmth deep down inside that place that made her blank to all that surrounded her vintage self, blank to the music and the madness, the hustlers and the hustled.

  She remembered when they first saw each other in the crowded room, like in the song. Lunch hour at Serenity. It was almost a year ago to the day. There he was. Right where Elaine had said he would be. Maggie had been sitting at a preferred table, picking over hot duck salad and dishing the dirt with Elaine, when she looked up and saw him at the bar, his smiling, dimpled blackness sucking her into his unknown. He quite literally took her breath away. She gasped—a tiny little gasp. He saw her see him and he laughed, suddenly, kindly—one of those silent, private laughs. His eyes sparkled with new mystery.

  “Well, I think I’ve stayed too long at the fair,” Elaine said with a naughty little victory smile. Then she got up and left, giving the beautiful young man a nod of approval as she passed his way.

  Maggie had guessed him to be twenty-one. Maybe. There or about. So she felt flattered and confident in her goods, knowing that she was still lovely and shapely enough for hearty young men half her age. With eyes smiling at her, he got up from the bar and walked slowly toward her table. Her eyes smiled back and invited him to sit.

  Magnanimously she allowed him to speak his sweetness and buy her a drink. She pretended to blush when he gave her the detailed directions to his place, which was not far at all, just up Mount Vernon Drive.

  She even pretended not to know why she so readily accepted this new chance and adventure, but accept she did. She left the bar ahead of him and pulled herself together with each step; the Diana Ross eyes and shoulders and the hair-weave cascade. By the time the attendant had brought her Mercedes around she was feeling better having pulled it together, knowing that the kindness of a child was hers to do with as she pleased.

  Chapter Two

  He had lived all his young life nestled in the easiness of L.A. He was a pretty young black thing with few friends but many acquaintances. His sinful good looks, gentle manner, and lip-smacking physique were kept fine, firm, and lean at some nondescript gym and blessed darker than his natural cocoa blackness by long visits to nude beaches. He was the object of sexual admiration and hallowed envy of those who proudly—and with deep innuendo—claimed to know him best.

  But he maintained an inoffensive distance, and it was this aloofness free of petty narcissism that kept desire for him kindled in the flaming hearts and stained panties of so many.

  Yet he was easy, easy as the city of his birth, easy as the Malibu coves where he so often stretched his naked body, black as rich mahogany on top of beige sand—easy. His own best company. Probably.

  He could spend all day in the house alone if he wanted to, looking out over the city, soaking in a tub, oiled up for masturbation in front of the mirror.

  The king of cool out and nonchalance. He probably didn’t need the real world as much as the real world needed him.

  This was how Maggie Lester-Allegro imagined him, even as she entered the small but stunning cantilevered bungalow with the city-to-ocean view that he called home.

  “Well…this is it,” he mumbled with sleepy charm as he left her standing in the sunken living room while he walked his beautiful bowlegged self to the sliding glass door. The door was the separation of dining area and terrace, a terrace that hovered dramatically over a deep brush-filled canyon that ran next to a descending LaBrea Boulevard. Quite clearly, on a smog-free day, one could see on equal level the Hollywood Hills several miles north.

  “Very nice,” Maggie found herself saying in a suddenly husky voice, her gaze less keen to the nature beyond the terrace and more attentive to the delectable definition of neatly curved ass hidden beneath white linen pants. He, caught in a moment of environmental religion, stared out over the city below knowing that his back—for her entertainment—was to her. “Very nice,” she said again. Only then did he turn to her, slowly, and smile that smile.

  “I guess…considering what I pay.”

  “It’s really very nice. Very quaint. No, I mean it. It’s…it’s absolutely adorable.”

  “Thanks.”

  He stood facing her for a moment longer, looking down at her as she imagined herself melting in the center of his sunken living room, melting under the glare of black-as-midnight eyes that held her transfixed with silent power. Then, and only then, did he move away from the terrace.

  It took her a moment, but finally she came to.

  “Do you do this often?” She suddenly heard the words slithering past her lips. The earlier margaritas had loosened her tongue’s grip.

  “Do what?” There was a knowing sparkle in his voice.

  “You know…”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “You know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Do you?”

  “Only with the pretty ones.”

  “Talk your trash,” Maggie laughed.

  “Have a seat.” He gestured with a new kind of stare that almost made her cum.

  “Thank you,” she said, catching her breath, and then she did so. She sat with an elegant grace and a neat new coyness that conjured ghosts of virgin past.

  When he finally asked, “What are you drinking?” it too caught her off guard and suddenly she was grandly indecisive and marvelously confused.

  “Anything’ll do,” she said finally.

  “One ‘anything’ll do.’ ”

  “You need to stop that.”

  “For lovely Maggie Lester-Allegro.”

  “You remembered.”

  “Of course. It’s a very lovely name.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Moore.”

  “Mr. Moore…I love it.”

  It was the dimples that alerted Maggie, for they made him seem truly young…maybe too young for respectability.

  Suddenly he was a growing little boy, a flower whose full flourish could be cut short by an impatient admirer choosing to pick without regard for the closed, unblossomed bulb. But his open fragrance that caused a stirring within her, a tingle within her not-bad-for-forty-one-year-old body, demanded guilt to take leave and leave her to the duty of serving desire, serving youth, being served.

  She promised herself—even as he fixed their drinks with his back to her, his beautiful ass, a work of high-hoisted, slitted perfection beneath white linen pants to her—that she would be gentle with him. Then she laughed, realizing how foolish her Cleopatrian fantasies were becoming. He truly may have been a spring chicken but the sparkle in his eyes told her that he, this deep, dark young thing, had surely danced around the barnyard with more than a few dowager hens while still keeping schoolgirl pussy moist with anticipation that was, she was certain, invariably fulfilled.

  “Know how to roll?” The clang of ice cubes being tossed into crystal sang out under his words.

  “You mean as in ‘rock and roll’?” she asked in her best youthful voice.

  “There’s some grass on the table.”

  “Oh hot!”

  She admired the many possible herb dispensaries intriguingly laid out before her—a silver cigarette case, a miniature ivory Buddha, an antique snuffbox—while her ears were keen to the sound of liquor splashing against ice in crystal.

 
; Three fat red Thai buds, pungent with their promising funk, awaited her in the antique snuffbox next to the Zigzags. With fragile fingers, she chipped at a bud, then tore off two sheets of cigarette tissue. With concerted, if not effective, effort, she began the ritual of decadent creation. Long, sculpted nails, elegant when holding a brandy snifter or a roach clip, were dismal in this particular effort, offering little assistance.

  Without looking up she could sense Dorian coming toward her. She was seated on the sofa—perched, that is—toiling with her assignment when she realized that he was standing so close to her that the discreet hint of his cologne, Royal Bain de Champagne, was in the breeze that entered from the open terrace. His sweet man-child scent swirled about her, flirted with her, fucked with her scandalously. But he just stood there. Yes. Just stood there for a moment, and that was when she looked up, finally, but not high enough, or perhaps as high as she wanted.

  It was eyes to crotch.

  His eye-level crotch was ever so beautiful and she just could not tell, no, she just could not tell, no…

  Briefs or boxers? No. It could not have been briefs. No. Not him. No!

  Perhaps he hung freely—thick, long, and free. She could not tell. And now as the fantasy danced inside her head, she looked away, back to her rolling drudgery. She needn’t let him see her lingering too long on secret treasures. After all, she had dignity to maintain.

  He knew how much she needed it—the drink that is—so sweetly he set the lead crystal glass on the table before her and then sat down next to her on the sofa. He then sipped at his own matching drink and sighed with pleasant relief.

  “I hope it’s all right,” he said, leaning back deeply into the womb of the sofa, spreading his long legs into a wide bulging gap, “…gin and tonic.”

  She placed the half-rolled joint to the side with grandeur, picked up the glass, and took a dainty piss-elegant sip.