120 Seconds

I have a triple-layered, industrial strength bag plastic bag filled with a good 50 pounds of poultry and goat meat slung over my shoulder. Why ask why when the image in itself is so perfect? My said cargo is to be delivered to a woman who works on the side as a cook. I am just the delivery man. But as I call her apartment and ring the bell like a madman, there's no answer.

"I haven't seen them all day," she says. Her hair is a fan of platinum blonde waves. Her button up halter is tighter than the Lincoln Tunnel at 6pm. Her bright orange shorts show the world the outline of a rear quarter more than worthy of the pages of KING Magazine. A Newport dangles from her lips. Oh, and she's holding her baby boy in her arms while the older girl runs around in circles entertaining herself.

"I can go up and knock if you want me too."

As it's summer there are so many other things I might want for her to do, things her kids shouldn't be seeing. I wonder if she would bring the cigarette into the bedroom, or whether or not the kids would be put in there while she led me to the Rent-A-Center couch adorned with a million unused packets of duck sauce, some bootlegs and the latest edition of Black Hair magazine.

As some fantasies are prone to be twisted, I guess this is mine in the here and now, a wet dream of what I could easily handle and appreciate were I any of a number of my homeboys back at the crib or across the globe.

When we were kids my boy Bobo once told me that I was "prejudiced against dumb people". There was definitely truth to that, but my Keyshia Cole wannabe sex dream doesn't seem to be unintelligent. She may not have been exposed to many of the things that I have. She may not have been to school, but I get the impression that she knows how to work the knowledge she does have, that she knows how to raise her children right.

The whole encounter lasts under two minutes. The whole time I'm thinking about trying to start a conversation. It doesn't feel right. As a matter of fact it feels very wrong, but in my current state of being the interaction is at least honest. She comes back downstairs looking disappointed.

"Nobody's answering," she says, the cigarette no longer there. "Sorry."

"It's alright," I say. "I'll come back later."

When I return to the Yellow Bug I'm caring for again, my godsister has moved my Ipod away from the playlist I made to the American Gangster album, "American Dreamin". I have to drop her off, and then get said goods to this woman in an hour or two. Then there's a party in LES that another godbrother is throwing. I'm finally getting to write a script I started 9 years ago. I'm getting back into Nightshift, and I'm trying to figure out how I'm getting to LA for my boy Glass's birthday in a few weeks. So much to do.

For some reason or another I'm reminded of a woman in my relatively recent past, one who came on so strong and wanted to know so much, one who constantly extolled the virtues of what it would be like to be with a "good" man, one who wouldn't hurt her like her baby's dad, etc. She wanted to see me, wanted to know me. But a few days before I was about to book the flight she sends me this really ugly comment about one of my blog entries that comes out of left field. A few days later she admitted that it was done to derail out would-be tryst, that she was too afraid, that she wasn't ready.

On a lark I checked her myspace page to find that she's happily in love and proclaiming it to all the world. She's apparently not scared anymore. I don't feel bad about it at all. I actually found myself laughing at the irony. So many times people fuck up corn flakes. I guess that's human nature.

As my Darius Lovehall days rest in rearview, it won't surprise me if I end up getting rich soon enough. Focus, Focus and more focus, a meditation that makes all that isn't into what is. Out.