Unashamed by Emma Janson Page B

squeezed his six-foot, three-inch frame into my Geo Metro the best he could without throwing up, and I dropped him off at his barracks. “So what happened after I dropped you off from the bar?” I shifted in my seat to see him more clearly.
    Terrance pushed back into his seat and began to buckle his seatbelt. “I went to bed and knocked the fuck out. Didn’t get up ’til about fo-thirty the next day.” He clicked it tight and put his arm around the girl sitting next to him.
    Doug interjected to ask me, “You know this fool?”
    “Yeah, he got ripped at the bar, so I took him to his barracks last week. He was dancing like a he was having seizures.”
    I laughed as Terrance used his free hand to nervously exaggerate his embarrassment. “Please don’t tell these things.” He removed his arm from behind the girl’s neck and folded them over his crotch. Not only was he a tall, skinny black man, but this was the first time I took notice of how fidgety he was. “I’m losing all my cool points and shit. It wasn’t even like that man, it’s all lies!” Terrance nervously giggled, then leaned forward between the seats to change the CD. “Let’s go already. I’m gettin’ a fucking cramp in my black ass back here.”
    We let Terrance dominate the first fifteen minutes of travel conversation. He provided the ice breaking we all needed so, by the time we arrived in Tucson, we were behaving like best friends.
    I’d been surprised that Douglas, with all his portrayals of sophistication, would be buddies with a down-to-earth, slightly ghetto kid like Terrance. It definitely helped soothe my comfort level and showed me another side of Douglas, the great Italiano Magnifico— I mean “Medi-fucking-terranean.”
     
    After having a few drinks at the hotel room, the four of us walked to the club. After having a few drinks at the club, Douglas and I walked back to the hotel.
    I figured it would be better to have sex in private than to have his hands in my pants on the dance floor, although no one was actually looking. I was wet and this was rare in itself, so I whispered in his ear, “Let’s go back to the room.”
    Without hesitation, we left our drinks behind right along with Terrance and the girl he came with. On the short walk back he held my hand, smiling. It was a genuinely happy smile, unlike the greedy, lustful faces I was accustomed to seeing. I thought he was absolutely the sexiest man I’d ever met without a shadow of a doubt. I wanted to sleep with him, and so it happened.
    I cannot tell you how long it actually lasted or how wonderful it was because my first time with Douglas wasn’t about the sex. I actually can’t remember that part. It was all of the things before the encounter, and all of the things after it, that made me fall in love with him.
    Afterward, I rested in his arms for hours as if we had been together for years. We talked and joked and laughed the entire time before deciding to really make an effort to fall asleep. In the morning we were the happiest couple. We dove into conversation as soon as we realized the other was awake. When an hour passed, Douglas got up to pee as I brushed my teeth at the sink. Then, he stepped into the shower as I took my turn on the toilet, quite naturally choreographed.
    I pointed out a fact as I wiped the urine off and flushed. “Jesus, look at us, we have not stopped talking. You would think we were married! I’m peeing in front of you for God’s sake. I never do that!” I got up to wash my hands and proceeded to pick my teeth and two pimples in the mirror.
    He echoed from the shower, “I feel like we are married too! Go make me breakfast, woman!”
    We giggled and laughed together like lovestruck idiots before Terrance threw a pillow at the bathroom door and moaned for us to shut the fuck up.
    Douglas and I just knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, our futures would be together.
     
    We ordered a pizza upon our return to the barracks. The plan was to relax