"Damn, soft lips," she said, flirting. I looked at my watch, on the verge of cock blocking.

"Soft hand, Ma."

"You got a phone number?"

I said, "Girl you date my cousin, that's fucked up." Jokingly of course.

She dismissed my comment with the wave of her hand. "Your cousin got other bitches.

And Taquana is saying she's pregnant from him."

"Girls will be girls," I suggested, smiling, pinching her cheek. She and Kenny exchanged numbers.

And the Zephyrhills syndrome began.

Kenny and I got along almost perfectly. We got close over the next few weeks, which poured into months.

We went to the movies.

I met his family. We hung out. He sometimes came over to my mom's house to chill. We played video games together. We flirted with chicks at the malls.

We fucked women together. We confided

in each other about everything. We stayed on the phone all damn night, talking about the future, life and our pasts.

We each told each other the darkest things about one another. It brought us closer.

In school I rarely flirted, because it was all about school work. Mama was on my ass like a cord plugged in the wall.

She had a tight hold on my progress reports,report cards and classroom behavior. She never sat back and let the teacher do everything.

She played a very hands-on role. She wouldn't hesitate to put that extension cord on my ass, I feared her to death I fucked a lot of people, but I kept it on the low. I never kissed and told.

Not even to my best friend Mark Birds and Theodore Sampson.

I had sex with a lot of people in my neighborhood, the Pine Island Projects.

Three months went by and Kenny and

Tonya were dating, very discreetly. Three women claimed to be pregnant from him. He didn't care.

"I wore a Jimmy. Plus that ain't my gahdamn baby."

Tonya heard about it but she didn't care.

She was still seeing my cousin, who was cheating on her left and right, but she wanted Kenny and she got him.

She used her pussy for her own sick

pleasures. I was still a little wet behind the ears then, but that was slowly drying up. Kenny was sociable, well-liked and popular.

He was on the basketball team, doing real well. He made about ten points a game, three assists, a few dunks.

Nothing major but major enough. He made decent grades. But he fucked a different chick almost every night, even bitches from other schools.

Sometimes he'd tell me to meet him somewhere and we'd hook up, go over to some chick's house and run a train on her. I couldn't always do that 'cause Mama worked.

I was the product of a single parent house hold with two little brothers (and an older brother who ran the streets and sold dope) so I had to be mom's eyes and ears and belt while she worked.

He'd call me on the phone when he was getting it on so I could listen. I used to jack off, stuck in my own world.

One day before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, he came to me when I was just walking out my mom's front door to catch the number 70 city bus.

I caught this bus only when Mama didn't feel like taking me to Melvin's house, my cousin, so I could catch the school bus.

I used his address to go to Southridge anyway because I didn't want to go to Homestead Senior High or South Dade.

"We gotta talk," he said.

"About what?"

"Tonya. You know we're dating, right?"

"Yea."

"She thinks I'm being unfair."