THIS EXCERPT IS STRICTLY FOR THE SEASONED, MATURE, ADULT READER NOT FOR UNDERAGE READERS*

Angie Situation (NAIVETE')    SNEAK PEEK of the PREQUEL TO <--THIS SEQUEL "Angie Situation" (INNOCENCE)

excerpt from CHAPTER 4  "Character Flaws, Slips and Falls"

…and I accepted the fact that in the end of all this, I was merely left with nothing but insatiable sex with Pucker, minus any traces of guilt, sneaking around, fear, or shame.

The eyesore in that (in comparison my serious life, and something that Santana had all over Pucker) was that Pucker wasn’t very bright or talented, or had any other valuable or useful redeeming qualities outside good sex and methodical pursuit of me. He was very good-looking, very awkward, and I liked his speaking voice-the way he talked-pronounced his words. He had a real sloppy but sexy walk. And I hated cigarettes but the way he even puffed on a cigarette or a blunt, and smoked his weed while talking and dumping the ashes out in an ashtray was sexy. And the way he would stare at me-I could see his thoughts.

But in my eyes, he blew the bulb in the “bright” department when he opened up that Pandora’s box with Twin a while ago. That was a minus about him to me-a serious one though, with red ink. He lost a whole lot of cool points over that. After that happened, combined with the fact that I learned he was a popular jock; that mishap made me think that other than for his sexual and shallow qualities, he was just a box of rocks dumb jock. But outside of that, I loved him. I loved his “way” with me. His plus was his sex. And in my all my naiveté, that made me respect him and treat him like a “man.” In my world, it served him well and got him respected (and served well) by me. I was happy with him. For like, a whole year, he was perfection-never a dull moment, and totally won me over. But as I was learning him, from being around him so much, no matter how small or large-or whether it was just in conversation where he would be telling me a story; there would always be something about, or in the story that would make me cringe (about how he went about handling whatever we would be talking about).

I even set him up one day, after being challenged to do so.

Well over a year after Pucker’s Pandora’s box opening, and well into this history in the making, I got my second red flag but it was so funny that I just charged it to the game-a naughty little game that myself, one of my homegirls and her sister were playing-that backfired. It was pretty funny. We had been having our usual girl talk-talking about phone sex and our boyfriends and all. My friend got so into it that she wanted to know if I would call her boyfriend up and pretend I was this random girl that knew her boyfriend from someone else who had given me his phone number. I was pretending as though I had been watching him but hesitant, and certainly interested in him or whatever.

We all sat at the kitchen table, I called him up on the phone.

It started off as just…a normal conversation that ended up moving to a sexual conversation that aroused him to the point of “wanting to meet” me.  She was pissed! I guess to just be sitting there in my face (at the kitchen table) watching me on the phone get her boyfriend off who by invitation, asked if he could meet me at a particular area (near where he lived). It was too unbelievable that he fell for it. He just totally followed his horniness.

At any rate, she and I rolled up on that fool (a distance away from the meeting spot), only to find that he was really with it and there-waiting. He even started walking around the building that I told him I (allegedly) lived in. We watched all of this laughing our asses off, imagining the horror of some unsuspecting person drawing their blinds back to their basement apartment only to find this horny fool with his dick in his hand; looking for some sexy girl he just got off the phone with that promised to fold and unfold him in to hell and back. We joked and laughed about it but still, she sat and watched: pissed. She wanted to kill him. It took everything in my power to persuade her not to get out that car and it was hard to.

Then she flipped in on me: “Call that mutherfuckin’ Pucker. He’s not exempt! Most of these guys out here would have fallen for a conversation like that. They’re all horny! He’ll do it too!” she yelled.

“But Posh, he knows my voice! There is no way humanly possible I can start in and lead him OUTSIDE like we did Andre! That shit was classic girl!” I laughed.

“Nah, Andre’s been around you and knows your voice too! Just use that same voice in that same pitch you were using with Andre! He and Andre went to the same school. Pucker was popular! Girls wanted Pucker. He didn’t just all off! He probably talks to so many girls-and with all these girls chasing him, he will not know. He’s going to do the same thing! Watch!” she challenged.   

That got my radar beeping. That challenged made me rush home to try it.

We sat back at the kitchen table.

Dialed.

He answered.

My heart was beating fast. I figured that if he busted me, I’m his girl, so I could play it off and tell him that I was just curious to see if he would fall for it.

He fell for it.

But he probed and asked more questions than Andre and it was harder to get him receptive to how I was trying to work him, so I worked him slow-a lot of dead air in the phone, but I was getting somewhere, I had his attention. He was enjoying my feeding into his ego about how I used to watch him but he was so popular and was with Soccer, but still-I wanted him badly. Mentioning Soccer was obviously enough to prove to him that I most probably did attend school with him. He fell for that without probing me about anybody we may have had in common. I thought that was pretty stupid. Those lil’ ego strokes started breaking him down to constant “mmm hmm’s” and he was more receptive to me. He was sitting back enjoying me tell him about all the things I wanted to say and do to him that he listened on. His voice wasn’t aroused like it would be when we would cozy up on the phone, but I was dying to know if he had his hands his pants, so I asked:

“Where are your hands?”

He replied mannishly and bluntly:

“On my nuts…” I almost burst into laughter. Posh and sis were watching me intently. I held my index finger up to them, so as to remind them to not let me forget to tell them about that moment. 

Next thing I know, my mom picked up the phone from the living room: “Angie come up to the front room and get Lucky and lay him in the bed!”

My eyes stretched wide and I hung up the phone-thinking Pucker would hang up too.

He didn’t. Posh, sis, and me sat at the table looking forty ways to stupid.

I ran to the hallway in the house and listened to my mother down in the living room, still in conversation with Pucker.

He told on my ass.

My mom came walking down the hallway and hung that left to the kitchen: “What the hell are y’all doing playing with the “Lil’ Boy”–a man now, but still, that household name that she had given Pucker long ago, still hadn’t changed with her.

“Mom we were just playing around,” I laughed.

I think we sat at that kitchen table laughing the rest of the night-especially when I reenacted Pucker saying: “On my nuts…”–it was so unsexy and hilarious. 

Well, Posh (or me) never got to find out if Pucker would have been down to “meet up,” like her Andre did, but when Pucker and me talked later that night he wanted to kill me. He thought it was pretty funny after I explained why we did it and how we got Andre out the house to follow his horny. Pucker and I laughed all night about that one.

He said he totally had no idea that girl on the phone was me, so I did pretty well.

I’ll never know what would have become of that night but I ended up letting it go and charging that one to the “game.” He lost no cool points. No harm, no foul, so I didn’t bitch at him about it. I had nothing to go on.

I never wanted to seem like I was nagging, correcting, or chastising him all the time because of the way I came down on him long ago about opening our Pandora’s box to Twin. He felt so many ways to stupid about that-that (to protect his heart), I would tread lightly around stupid stuff he would do, going forward. I learned to deal with cringing and just counted it as a character flaw of his that, because I loved him; I would go on and accept…

When you’re young and in your naiveté, there are things that you will accept and continue to entertain and tend to that [when you become sophisticated and seasoned in your thinking and standards], you won’t even give audience to [it or that person] for one iota of a second. Not because you think you are better, but because you are aware of what your standards or boundaries are (and why). Why--because you know that: “No, I cannot deal with a non-thinking man,” (because in the long-run, his inability to use his head will indeed fall back on you at some point, in some way or another, to some great or small degree)…

It’s like, in our naiveté, none of us have the capacity to think ahead about long-term consequences of the things we do or say (or get involved in). Because in our naiveté, we are still in that “promiscuous” frame of thinking (or being) in a way that we don’t have the capacity to be as discriminating as somebody sophisticated and seasoned in their thinking (or being).

But some people, while in their naiveté, do have the capacity to think ahead in short-term consequences whereas other people, while in their naiveté, absolutely, positively do not have that capacity to think ahead about short-term consequences under any certain or uncertain terms whatsoever.

Like…you just don’t step to a bully at your school (for which you have to attend five days per week/six hours a day with) and that bully is known for kicking ass and taking down names just for the hell of it if he got bored enough. A guy who uses his head, wouldn’t try and strike up a conversation with the bully by telling him that you know his sister (who’s a homebody, who has no friends in the neighborhood, has a man and a baby) and think you are going to met with anything less than scorn, caution and a threat. You can’t let the euphoria or the emotion about what you’re feeling about a person (or anything) cause you to want to tell it to someone (or people) who you already know would have no interest or reason to want to share that with you.

Pucker was definitely not in that line when God was handing out those capacities and abilities to think (and apply thinking to any particular situation). And every faux pas that happened throughout the remainder of the relationship with Pucker was the result of his very own inability to think-just…basic thinking.

It was like a lesson that I learned in my innocence with Santana, that whole: young girl fairytale in her head about being swept off her feet, the envy of onlookers, the prom, treated like a princess, first love, happily ever after fantasy (that although I did get) delivered the reality check I needed when Santana first cheated (and didn’t think and use his head). That was my first wake up call about ridding yourself of silly little fantasies by which real people, with real beating hearts cannot fit the mold of-happily ever after. And Santana’s inability to “think” about the fact that he was smack dead in the middle of a relationship with a girl that he loved and adored and who’s virginity he took and share his with too; wasn’t enough to use his head when faced with the “opportunity,” time, and space to take someone else up on their “offer” to give him their virginity as well.

So when you remove yourself from the fantasy, and the real person and the reality steps into view; then you prepare yourself for realistic standards and boundaries by which [a real person who is with you and wants to continue that] has to “think for the team…” they have to use their head when reality “offers opportunities.” They have step back and decide if in the long run/long term; how is this going to affect me with my girl (and vice versa). So in that experience, I learned (even during my naiveté) to be cautious of men who do not think/use their heads (regardless the situation). Because if a thinker thinks about the long run/long term, they realize that their short-term desires are not even worth it after all. That’s what a thinking man or thinking person knows. And one who doesn’t-does not.

With Pucker, I was no better than a non thinking person either, when I got my red flag early that Pucker too, was most probably not the most thinking-est man. However (from being young, dick-whipped, and naïve-but with the capacity to think in only short-term consequences, and definitely not seasoned or sophisticated enough to think about my long-term consequences) a man like Pucker did stay in my naïve life that, had I had the capacity to act on my ability to think; he should have been avoided.

But life sometimes has to show us better than tell us. (So I learned).    

So I was learning… 

I always very observant and for over a year now, he and I had been at this thing to the point where everyone in his inner circle knew who I was, knew me, and knew that I was his “other main chick.”

I had a friend named Kris who attended the public school with Pucker and his guys, but she attended the artsy school with me when we were elementary age. She and I remained friends and whenever I could, we would hang out at the club sometimes with our fake ids, and we’d get together on weekends. I would put extensions in her hair, and we would take Lucky out with us to functions at the park and stuff. She was my homie for life: A cute chocolate drop of a girl with a big pretty smile and silly ass hell. She was pigeon-toed and proud about it. It just fit her personality so much that she invented her own walk to sexy it up. Kris would come over and we would get sexied up even if it was to walk to the grocery store. That girl was a mess.

She knew that my mother sometimes want to make me feel punished for derailing my life and having a baby, so Kris didn’t want me fighting a battle of being young with a baby alone, so she made it her business to be really inclusive to help me be okay with it-and not embarrassed. Whenever all three of us were together, me being a young mom seemed simpler. As a young girl, all my life I one of those really intense and serious young girls-and if I didn’t know you, I could seem kind of intimidating at first-that’s why all my friends were friends I had grown up in the neighborhood with, and had gone to school with. Outside of that, I wasn’t one for letting people into my world (male or female). So unless you knew me, it wasn’t very easy to bring out my humor or even know that I had any beneath my armor. If anything was a “joke” there truly had to be laughing or a joke really going on. Kris was funny and a “fass” girl [was the nickname old people would call girls like her]: that girl who wasn’t necessarily promiscuous but could be so “common” and loud that you just assumed that she was. But Kris wasn’t. She just liked a good time.

When we would be out walking around and about, she liked to take turns playing mommy. When Lucky would get tired of walking, we would take turns picking him up and holding him on our hip, and when the guys would drive by blowing their horns, if she was stuck holding Lucky she would yell: “Come back, come back cutie! This aint my baby!” and would burst out laughing. All three of us would. I’d be chasing her pigeon-toed ass down the street while she would start running from me to keep me from swinging on her and choking her. We we’re inseparable around this time.  

 Well, her boyfriend was one of Pucker’s friends from school (not one of the ones in his inner circle). He told Kris everything. He and Kris were theeeeeee most gossiping couple but kept their gossip between each other. Every time she and I would gossip amongst one another, no matter where we were, what we were doing, or how loud she may have been previously talking; when something would pop in her mind that her boyfriend told her, she would stop in her tracks, toot her lips and her voice and say: “Girrrl Bilal told me that [X-Y-Z]” or: “Bilal said that [X-Y-Z and A-B-C!] girl! That’s what Bilal says!” …I’d be tickled to death. They were such private gossips. It was hilarious.

Kris pretty much knew the goings on with Pucker at school and would keep me informed of anything I needed to know-big or small. Even if someone merely licked Pucker and was trying to get on with him, she’d have the 4-1-1. She was my homie-that’s what we do. Luckily, Pucker was a model boyfriend (to me and to Soccer).

I never asked Pucker anything about Soccer. I knew that Soccer was somewhere on that other side of town and in the picture of Pucker’s life still—only because of Kris letting me know. But other than that, it was amazing how she was a non-factor in the relationship we had, even amongst all his friends. Pucker and I could carry on-on the phone for hours at a time when he would be at home. I could call his house at whim and get him on his phone or call his parent’s line and reach him there, whenever. And when I couldn’t (which was very rare) he most probably unplugged the phone or turned the ringer down if Soccer was there (I guessed). We never discussed it and she never was a problem (or interruption) in what we had, so, we just carried on.

As far as Santana and me, from Pucker’s view, nothing was any different and there were no riffs between us. Everything was about as kosher as it had always been. I never told him what happened between us-I just wanted things to go as smoothly as they had already been going. Furthermore, I didn’t want him to think that any part of my affection for him was because I was newly single. He’s still a man, and although my affection had been no more or less since my big breakup-telling him Santana was gone would put the ball in his court and it had already been in his court throughout the entire relationship because I could never resist his wanting to be with me-no matter what. Even for his emergency quick fix quickies he would need at whim a few times a day. Whether he wanted quality time, sit in the park or to just get straight at it-I was available to him 24/7/365.

Despite how attracted to him I was, I always stayed true to the situation at hand: He was just damned good-looking and a champion lover who had me paralyzed, passed out and in tears every time we made love. Period. He had an odd, good sense of humor about him and I really was crazy about him, I just never entertained the thought of him being the type of man I would raise a child with-especially not my child. From the start, he already knew how overprotective I was about my son, my boyfriend, and anything else pertaining to that. I never allowed him to meet my son. My whole “serious” life, for me, just did not fit into the equation with Pucker and his life. For that reason, Pucker just wasn’t a good match for me and my taste in any way near that regard. He was good for the young girl in me, doing what young girls with like me do with our lil boyfriends-the young girl with no responsibilities and seriousness about life other than preparing to graduate high school and all else going forward. He was good for me-less my serious responsibilities.

During all this time learning him and his surroundings, I did notice that of all his friends, he seemed to be the less brave one. His friends weren’t quite “thugs” but in comparison to him-they could be thought of as “gangsters.” It was kind of apparent that Pucker’s dreams of going off to the big college he would talk about in hopes of going pro; seemed like those plans had fallen through. So I couldn’t decipher if he seemed to be the less respected of them all, or maybe I should say…the lesser valued, or whatever-but it seemed as though his only “power” in his circle was that he had the stature, looks, car, and “way” that could snag the girls and bring all their friends to the yard. Other than that, everything else about him seemed to take a back seat, and his friends all stole the show whenever I would be around. So I could tell that it was probably that same way everywhere else, too (when I wasn’t around).

I loved Pucker so much and I felt so bad for the little I thought of him outside of his shallow qualities, plus what little his friends thought of him outside of what little value he provided to the thoroughness of his clique (as compared to all of them). He was pretty much the lame or the weakest link of his inner circle, but his “power” was me. I was massive to his ego-in every way. With his friends, their girlfriends and such all went to the same school with them or lived in the vicinity and they all grew up together etc. Even when I lived out where they all lived, my only association was with Pucker (and Shana). So I was an outsider who became an “insider” by association with Pucker. And because I (now) lived further away, Pucker had to come out of his way to be with me, which would be for long periods of times, so all that made it seem like Pucker had something different [than the rest of them].

Boys will be boys...

The more I catered to Pucker, the more his friends would shine the light on his lameness whether it would be in a joke, or a conversation, or even a gesture, they would do it. The more I would observe it, the more I would cater to Pucker’s male-hood and make him feel special in front of them. But Pucker was such a bad judge of setting, circumstance, and situation; that he lacked the ability to understand what was going on around him-even my part in stroking his male ego. He couldn’t grasp what was really going on-because it was that major (on the surface).

On occasion, around us all; Pucker could be wearing his friend’s dunce cap and not even be aware of it because “they were his friends.” I would never say anything to him (about my observation) but I would be very demonstrative in my way; my submissiveness and respect that I would give him-in front of them, like-I was the: “honey go get me a beer” winch for him at all times. Pucker’s inability to see that he had the “power,”  now (because he really wasn’t the “man” that I was treating him as such); the more I turned up for him, the more he took it to another level-instead of sitting back and enjoying being treated, adored, catered to, and loved the way I loved him. It pumped his ego and went to his head in a way that if he too, wasn’t in his naiveté, a (seasoned and sophisticated “man”) could very well know what to do with a woman who was strictly about all things to keep him feeling powerful, encouraged and strong. But a man still stuck in his own naiveté can do nothing with that, but take it to his ego and head. And a woman (still in her own naiveté) cannot know that.

Eventually, Pucker’s taking this to another level backfired and messed him up pretty bad-because I hurt him (very bad). And when I realized how badly I hurt him, I was on a quest to put him (his ego, his pride, and his heart) back together again that while doing; spiraled out of control (because he wanted to hurt me back), but it ended up backfiring him in the worse way, and he lost control-he lost his footing…

He lost control way back from his very own first character flaw-that had nothing to do with me whatsoever: He was of bad judge of setting, circumstance, and situation; and he lacked the ability to understand what was going on around him. The same people that he wanted to prove something to and to hurt me back in front of (because they were witnesses to his hurt) didn’t respect him like they did one another. So although he may have been “entertaining” them (because boys will be boys) he still wore the dunce cap during, and through to the end… 

You see, “what had-happened was” : 

One of the nights while riding with Pucker to come see me, he was prepared. He slipped a folded piece of paper into my hand that had his phone number on it and a note beneath it that read: “Please call me, I have something that I want to, need to tell you. It’s something that I need to talk to you about as soon as possible, it is so serious. I’m serious, please. Please call me.”

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