Desire

It was almost midnight. I wrapped my mouth around the pizza, the doughy crust mingling with the tart sauce and the salty melted cheese sliding over my tongue. Then the roof of my mouth hit the spicy pepperoni, the tangy sausage, and the meaty hamburger and I rolled it all over my taste buds, my teeth working the gooey goodness.
It was something like sex, the sensation building to the point where you can't let it go . . . Oh, don’t stop, baby. I stuffed another bite in my mouth before I swallowed the first one. My cheeks pudged out and my eyes closed. I was in pizza hog heaven. This was as close to nirvana as I got.
Shoving it in fast, I covetously counted the pieces in case my girl Angelica, or Jelly, like everybody calls her, gets ahead of me and copped some of my share. Jelly jams as good as I do when it comes to food. I feel downright petite next to her. I weigh two hundred and twenty-five pounds. I know Angelica tops three hundred.
Jelly and I go way back. I met her in high school when we were picked out of the projects for a math enrichment program, of all things. Nobody had ever given a shit about potential mathematical Negroes before. But some bleeding hearts had this idea to test tons of black kids and apparently Jelly and I were among the cream of the crop. They said we had high IQs and big potential. We both were surprised because you couldn’t have guessed our smarts by our grades. We were run-of-the-mill fat black girls newly promoted into would-be math nerds.
We liked it because they took us all on fancy field trips and bought us stuff. We got big-time perks. It was the only reason we hung in there because the whole thing was a social drawback. It was definitely not down in an inner-city black school to be stylin’ like some sort of nerd.
But Jelly and I often discussed that if it wasn’t for that program, we’d probably still be in the projects with ten kids between us and less than ten dollars left out of our welfare checks each month once we’d spent for the necessities.
So now we were both computer programmers with nice homes and healthy incomes. But when you think about it, success is all relative. If we were back in the projects, we’d be getting fucked, maybe by low-life, no-working, dependent losers, but we’d at least be getting some. We’d get high when we could and we’d party when we could. We’d have friends and family and kids and we wouldn’t worry too much about shit because we’d be making it as best we could.
All we had now was each other and our jobs. We worked together in a big company, you’ve probably heard of it, with a bunch of white folks. White folks don’t think much of fat black women. Surprise, surprise.
One thing I’ve noticed about white nerdy men, they worship bony white women with big tits. It ain’t natural. But I don’t envy white women, because most of them don’t look like that.
Jelly pulled me from my thoughts when she snorted, turned the lights off, and pulled open the window blinds. I was irritated. What could be going on outside that was important enough to interrupt my pizza groove?
"Keeshia, check out those Mexicans heaving that heavy shit like it was nothing. They’re moving fast too. Where were they when I moved from my house and had to deal with those niggas leaning upside their truck and holding it upright while I was getting billed by the hour?" she demanded.
I sighed and moved to the window. Short, stocky men were unloading a moving van. I guess Jelly decided that they were Mexicans because of their small size and height. But they seemed uncommonly strong as I watched one handle a seven-foot sofa as if it were made of Styrofoam.
A classic silver VW Beetle pulled beside the van and Jelly and I both drew in a breath when we saw the woman who stepped out of it. She stood under the streetlight as if she were voguing for a magazine shoot. The light threw her ebony marble features into relief. Her hair and skin blended, both the color of patent-leather polished black.
She turned slowly, surveying our quiet tree-lined suburban neighborhood like she owned it. She had fine, chiseled features and huge eyes, the whites standing out against the black skin like they were opals. Her hair fell almost to her waist in waves like black ocean water.
Her outfit matched her attitude. She was decked out in head-to-toe blood-red leather. To top it off, she was tiny, one of those skinny little hos with big tits and a round African ass that filled me with envy.
Suddenly, she looked straight at us. Jelly and I shrank back from the window. Her lips parted and her teeth reflected the light like pearls. I shivered.
I wondered why she was moving in at midnight. What did it feel like to be a skinny bitch like her? Not that I was the envious type or anything. I just wondered. I stared at her through the window as she went in the house and pointed out to the movers where her heavy and expensive furniture was to go.
I suddenly felt empty, despite the sodden mass of pizza lying at the pit of my stomach. If only I could . . . I stuffed another slice of pizza in my mouth rather then finish the thought.
"There's sauce on your chin," Jelly said, holding two slices of pizza at once. I wiped at my chin.
"You still starting that Paradise Resort diet Monday with me?" I asked.
What if I could get little like that skinny heifer moving in across the way? My life would be perfect. Everything would be easy. Everyone would admire me. I wouldn't have to deal with my goddamn job and my asshole boss. . . . I'd have the man of my dreams, fuck, I’d have a man, period. Satisfaction of the sexual sort consisted only of my fantasies and the fingers of my right hand.
"Keeshia!" Jelly was saying. ""I was asking you about walking."
"Walking? I walk every day, otherwise I wouldn't get from point A to point B."
Jelly sighed. "You know what I mean. Around the block, a couple of miles a day."
"That's not going to lose me any weight. I'm going to blast out on the Paradise Resort diet on Monday. Are you with me?"
"You always starting some diet, girl, and they never stick. I'm giving up on the diets. I'm going to walk and cut out the sugar and fast food. That pizza was it, I'm cooking at home from here on out," Jelly pronounced, trying to fold her arms over her girth.
I raised an eyebrow. So my obese partner in dietary trauma was giving up on me. "I ain't never going to give up," I said softly. "Whatever it takes." I meant every word.