Page 28 of Tell Me I'm Not Dreaming

SUCHI

“ O h,” she says.

“I imagine you have questions.” Kofi eats some ice cream.

“Yeah … I … uh … my brain is … um. Give me a minute,” Suchi sputters.

“Of course.” He nods.

She takes a minute to think. The questions in her head are nonstop.

They overwhelm her so much that she’s about to bust. She opens her mouth, and they all just come falling out.

“Why did you become a sex worker? How do you enter that line of work? Did you have regular clients? Did you sleep with white women? Please tell me you didn’t engage in race play.

Also, was it just women clients? If not, that’s fine.

I just want to know. How much money did you make?

Oh, my god! That’s gauche. I can’t believe I asked you that.

Was it an Only Fans situation? Is there footage of you out there?—? ”

“Sooch, baby, slow down,” Kofi interjects.

“Sorry, I just have so many questions. This is quite a bomb you just dropped on me, man.”

He laughs softly. “I understand, and I’ll answer everything, I promise. Just one question at a time.”

“Right, sorry.”

“No apologies necessary.”

“Please start from the top,” Suchi requests.

“Okay, I was fresh out of grad school and working a low wage hourly job at a local department store that came with commissions. I worked in the outdoor dining section. We sold grills, smokers, backyard shade tents, that sort of thing. I was one of the best salesmen, thanks to my pop. As you know, he and his brothers are masters of grilling and smoking, so I knew everything when it came to selling them. I was swimming in commissions.”

“Yeah, it’s obvious that your dad and your uncle take barbecue very seriously, and you inherited that.”

“Pretty much.”

“If you were getting so many commissions, was the sex work to supplement your income?”

“It would have been if I hadn’t gotten fired.”

“Wait, what?”

“The general manager of our store only got his job because he was the brother of a senior VP. The senior VP insisted that his brother hire his son, the GM’s nephew.

The nephew was a lazy piece of shit who everyone hated.

He decided to make me his target. Didn’t like that I sold more merchandise than him. ”

“I think I see where this is going.”

“Yep, he accused me of inflating my sales numbers. I was fired, and their sales in that department plummeted.”

“Good.” Suchi eats some more ice cream.

Kofi snickers. “Meanwhile, I went to a bank for a business loan, ready to work for myself. Turns out, banks are not big on giving money to unemployed people.”

Suchi giggles.

Kofi grins at her and continues, “I knew that if I didn’t do something quick, my dream would be deferred.

I met up with a friend from work and lamented about my setbacks.

He mentioned that my former supervisor Sylvia could help.

She owned a house just outside of town, and she was using it as house of ill repute.

She rationalized that as long as consenting adults were willing to spend money for sex, why shouldn’t she cash in on that?

We split our earnings with her. She got thirty percent, and we kept the rest.”

“Did she set up clients for you?”

“Yeah, and in an interesting twist of fate, one of my first clients was the wife of the guy who got me fired.”

Suchi’s mouth is agape. “Shut up! That didn’t happen.”

“I’m not lying to you, baby.” Kofi smirks. “You want to know what else?”

“Do tell.”

“He was in the room when I fucked her.”

Suchi almost chokes on her ice cream. She laughs so hard her body shakes.

Kofi continues, “You should have seen the look on his face when in walks Zavier—that’s my middle name, and the name I used by the way—and it was me.

And it’s not like he could ask for a different dude because his wife specifically chose me, and it’s not like he could tell anyone that he was paying for sex, especially for his wife.

Turns out, he cheated, and she only agreed to take him back if she got a freebie. ”

This makes Suchi laugh even harder. He joins her in laughter. Soon though, his laughter dies. Suchi looks up at him and sees the tears in his eyes.

“Kofi.” Suchi goes to him and takes his face in her hands, wiping away his tears with the pad of her thumbs.

He takes her wrist in his hands, holding hers in place.

“I’m falling in love with you, Suchi. I know it’s too soon to say that, but I am.

You told me that no man has ever responded to your intelligence and your mother’s mental health with warmth and kindness.

Well, no woman has ever responded to former life like you have.

I once had an ex refuse to let me touch her after I told her that I had male clients, too.

She said the thought of being intimate with me disgusted her. ”

“That’s awful. I’m so sorry you went through that.” She kisses him. He holds her tightly and kisses her back.

“Keep going. Tell me about some of your clients.”

“There was Miriam. Her husband was cheating on her, and she found out. She left him and was staying with a friend when her friend suggested that she experience sex with a man who could actually make her come.”

“I agree with her friend. Did you have sex with the friend, too?” Suchi takes a napkin and wipes her hands before putting it in the empty ice cream bowl.

“No. Her friend and I never had sex, but the friend did watch me while I fucked another client during a swingers party Sylvia held at the house.”

“Wow, the things you must have seen.”

“Baby, you don’t know the half of it. I’ve seen die-hard white conservatives in leather chaps begging for Black dick.”

“Did they ever approach you?”

“All the time. And I turned them down every time. One wanted to watch me jerk off and promised not to touch me. I didn’t care. They were fucking hypocrites.”

“Good for you. How did your first meetings with clients go?”

“It would depend on the client. For example, with Miriam, she and I just talked for the first three months whenever she came to see me. Then, after a while, she asked if I could hold her. That led to lying in bed while I held her. Then lying in bed naked while I held her, then sex. And no, I never engaged in race play with anyone.”

“Good, that would have been a dealbreaker. So, Miriam was a regular client. Did you have other regulars? Also, how long did you do sex work?”

“I had about ten others, but not at the same time—and I performed sex work for five years. A large number of clients were one-timers.”

“Is there a client, besides Miriam, that you remember most?”

Suchi sees Kofi’s smile dim. He sighs.

“Yeah, there’s two of them. First was Alyssa.

A doctor found a tumor in her brain and gave her six months.

Her friends brought her to Sylvia’s. One of them was a client of my boy Javon’s.

Alyssa only came to see me once, but she was very appreciative of how I treated her.

Her friends took her on a trip around the world.

She sent me a couple of postcards.” Kofi looks down.

“She died eight months later. She was buried in the last place they visited, Italy.”

“And the other?”

He gives a small smile as a little bit of the light returns to his eyes.

“The other was a brother named Bryan. He was divorced and newly out the closet and had never been with a man. It was similar to Miriam. We talked and that evolved into other things. He eventually became more comfortable with me, and we started kissing then frotting. Then he decided he wanted to try giving head, then he wanted me to top him. He eventually moved to New York and met a nice man. He told me that my care helped him become comfortable with who he really was.”

“Would you call yourself bisexual?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve only wanted to pursue romantic relationships with women, but I am sexually fluid.”

“It’s interesting how many of us don’t want to admit that.”

“It makes sense. There’s a lot of fear in what folks don’t understand.”

He gazes warmly into Suchi’s eyes.

It’s crazy how saving your virtue is considered by many to be a sign of a good person . Those folks would call Kofi everything but a child of God due to his past . And yet, this man has the purest soul of any man I have ever met .

“All of them meant something to you.”

He nods. “I remember Miriam once told me that I made her feel wanted, and she hadn’t felt that way in a long time.”

“That’s really beautiful. Far too many people see sex work as a negative when it can really benefit people.”

“That’s why I’m not ashamed of my past. The majority of my clients, at one point, had people in their lives that were constantly disappointing them. I wasn’t going to be another one. I made each one of them feel cherished because that’s how I saw them. I saw the beauty that others refused to see.”

They gaze at each other for what feels like forever, when Kofi says, “I know how important your girls are to you, so you can talk to them about this if you would like.”

“Thank you. Aimee’s going to have tons of questions.”

They share a hearty laugh.

“Kofi?”

“Yes, Suchi.”

“Do you want to take me home and make me feel beautiful and cherished?”

Kofi stands and offers her his hand. “It would be my pleasure.”

They go straight to Suchi’s bedroom. The décor of her apartment is Mediterranean.

She likes the combo of terracotta, white and deep red for her walls, with similarly colored mosaic tiled floors.

She decided that, while the rest of her home would look like an adult’s, her bedroom would be her sanctuary.

It’s decorated in light purple shades, light blue and light pink.

From the walls to the bedding, everything about her room screams cute and plushy.

A long time ago, Suchi chose to make the place she lays her head as soft as possible.

Treating kids who were dealing with lots of trauma made her want a soft place to land when she came home.

Kofi looks around her room. “This is very you.”

“How so?”