I had never seen a black man's penis before that Saturday night we went out, Brooklyn Max and John and I. Well, no, of course that is not true, since I had seen plenty of them in the locker-room in college, (although none growing up in my sheltered backwoods, entirely white, hometown) and in the sauna we were lucky to have as part of our college gym. But I had never seen one up close or an erect one, or one in action before, and it is still a sight that haunts my memories some twenty years after the fact.
Someone had told us about a party on Middlefield Drive up at the north end of town, past the graduate student housing apartments. We wandered around till we found what we thought was the place. It was one of those late September nights that still had the feel of summer -- at 8pm it still was in the upper 80s, and most everyone usually wanted all their windows open to let the hot, heavy air circulate.
We had a couple six-packs of Pabst, and we had brought some cards since it sounded like there would be a pile of poker playing to do. Max was a little short feisty guy from New York, his accent and manner could force a pained expression out of all the stuffy, well-heeled New England types who populated our college town. He was funny and reminded me of a low-brow Woody Allen, and after seeing his tough-it-out neighborhood in New York, I had developed the theory that the reason his humor was so well developed was in order to save his hide as a kid, since he was neither large nor powerful nor fast. Deflecting anger and aggression was probably a good idea. He could get you laughing over his stories of life down there, faster than you imagine, and lots of nights after a few beers, he would get us falling out of our chairs with some bizarre tale from his past, like the time he noticed a couple making out on the subway, who got so involved that the woman's panties had dropped down to her ankles, while her guy worked his hand up her dress and over her vulva. He could play the story out until you couldn't wait to hear what happened, and we were all dying to find out if the wench had tripped over her panties on the way out of the subway car or what. An evening spent with Max was never wasted.
John was from Virginia, tall and slender with immaculate manners, and he had a quiet wit and a nice soft southern accent. He told different kinds of stories, longer and more rustic, about growing up in rural Virginia, finding backwoods stills and various hideaways and drinking illicit whiskey with the local hill folk. Unlike Max and I, who had grown whatever facial hair we could to make us look older than our 19 years, John was clean-shaven and really, his body was still mostly hairless to a fairly astonishing degree. We made a lively threesome.
We checked the address, walked up some stairs to the porch, and knocked on the door. The lights were on and we could see some folks inside on a couch through the curtains, but the lights were low and it wasn't nearly as noisy as a party should have been.
We waited a couple minutes and knocked again. A tall black guy came to the door, with something, not even a towel but some quickly grabbed piece of fabric, maybe a couch slip cover or something, wrapped around his waist. He looked hot, his forehead quite sweaty, and his breathing was somewhat rapid.
"Whattaya want?" he asked.
"Ah" John stammered, a bit uncharacteristically, "we heard there was a party here tonight. 243 Middlefield Drive? This is the right place?"
"Yep, that's here. Who told you, Kenny?"
"Yes, it was Kenny," said Max.
The guy smiled. "Party was last night. Kenny got the date wrong."
The three of us looked at each other and felt pretty stupid.
"No," Max insisted, "it was tonight, I know Kenny said tonight."
"Probably did," said the guy, "but it wouldn't be the first time the boy erred."
We laughed and started to apologize to the guy. He waved his hands and told us it was nothing, and then noticed the six-packs of beer in John's hands.
"Hey, you all still up for a party? I meant to have some beer around but am plumb out. It's fierce hot and those beers sure look good. If you don't mind donating the beer, I can round some other things to munch on to go with them."
"Okay if we have visitors, Coleen?" he turned to his companion on the couch, whom we had not noticed until now. She had a cute blonde pony tail and now that we paid attention she actually looked really quite handsome. She was slender, her hair a bit mussed, but a very appealing woman.
"Sure Eddy," she said. "Come on in, boys."
We sat down in the living room, made introductions, and passed beers around. It was fairly instantly obvious that they had just been having a little sexual session on the couch. Both of them were still pretty sweaty and the room smelled like sex. Eddy was built like a wide receiver, long and lean, with close cropped hair and an angular face. Coleen had pulled on a short little bathrobe, made of satin or some such smooth fabric, but had not been very careful about how well she closed it. We could see her cleavage and by the way her breasts moved around inside the robe it wasn't hard to figure out that she had no bra on or in fact anything at all.
The guy popped the top of his beer and took a long draught, then let out a sigh of pleasure.
