This is a short story I wrote for a story contest. It won 2nd place. If anybody out there is reading my blog please let me know what you think of it. Love Stinks
© 2005 Gena L. Garrison
Love stinks! It stinks worse than a week old baby diaper. It stinks worse than 50 pounds of rancid garbage lying on the curb. It even stinks worse than this nasty bloated corpse that I keep coming back to and checking on. No love isn’t blind it’s funky.
I know what I’m talking about because I love P.J. At one time I loved this fool more than I even loved myself. I mean he was everything that I’d ever dreamed of and some things I was too stupid to even dream about.
Me and Lesha, she’s my best friend, was sitting out on the steps chillin the first time I saw him walk by. Just so ya’ll know me and Lesha been tight since she moved into our building when I was ten and she was nine. Up until then I didn’t have no real friends around here because most of the kids my age was hardheaded boys. All they wanted to do was show me their lil wiggly pee pees and at ten that was the last thing I wanted to see.
At my house there was me, momma, my older sister Danielle, and Danielle’s rugrat Tyra. Her baby daddy Tyrone was there most of the time too but his name wasn’t on the lease. I slept on the couch because I got tired of hearing Danielle and Tyrone humping all night. At least in the living room I could drown out their stupid noise, and what they called love.
Love not only stinks but it makes you do stupid shit. Danielle said she loved Tyrone and she didn’t even leave him alone when she found him in Momma’s bed. Momma said she loved him too and because of all that love Danielle’s got another rugrat and I gots a lil brother. Tyrese and Tyrone Jr. could be twins if they hadn’t dropped out of different women only a month apart. Yeah love is funky as shit.
So you’d think that after living with the stench of love in my own house I would have known better than to get caught up with P.J. but Outkast is right when they say roses really smell like booboo. Love is like that. It smells sweet at first, but the more you sniff the worse the smell gets.
P.J. strolled by me and Lesha that day like he didn’t notice but he was just trying to play it cool. I watched him walk down the block with his pants hanging at just the right spot on his butt. He was Sean John’d right down to his draws. Now me and Lesha are tight so we don’t have no man conflicts. We agreed right after the whole Momma, Danielle, Tyrone thang that if we was both interested in the same dude we’d be upfront about it, and work it out. As soon as P.J. was down the street far enough not to hear me I turned to her and laid it on the line. “Don’t even think about it girly. That one is gonna be mine.”
“How you gonna just call a nigga like that? He was looking at both of us.”
“No he wasn’t his eyes was all over these big ass titties of mine.”
Lesha shut the fuck up then cus she ain’t gots nothing on her chest but some overgrown mosquito bites. If we’d been standing up and he’d gotten a look at her apple booty she might have had a chance cus my booty is wide and flat. But from the front, I was the one who got all the attention and she knew it.
We sat chillin on the steps for about a half hour before P.J. came back up the street. He was not even looking where he was going cus his head was down and he was scratching one of those lotto things. I don’t know why people keep wasting their money on them damn thangs. Nobody ever wins the lottery but Mexicans and po white trash. A nigga ain’t got a chance at it. But this lotto ticket turned out to be my lucky or unlucky day depends on how you look at it. P.J. tripped over my foot that somehow ended up in his path and the next thing I knew he was lying on the steps on top of me. I grinned, he grinned and it was on.
By the end of the week P.J. was on top of me again. We was in his bedroom and he was slamming his dick into me harder than I’d ever been fucked before. It shoulda hurt he was stroking me so fast and so hard but it felt so damn good. Two times he had to put his hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming so loud his momma and four sisters would hear. They was in the living room watching TV when me and P.J came in from the movies. We’d held hands and kissed through the whole show and once he’d even tried to finger me under my skirt. By the time we got back to his house I was on fire. I was polite and said hi to all of them then P.J. pulled me in the back to his room.
I’d been with other boys before, but P.J. was different. He took his time to slowly take off my halter-top and then my mini skirt. Then he stepped back and stared at me standing there in my Victoria Secret lingerie. He let out a long whistle and grinned from ear to ear. P.J. was probably the finest brother living in Fieldcrest apartments. He was tall enough to play basketball but said it bored him. His skin was smooth and supple almost like a baby’s and when he held my hand I liked looking at the contrast of colors. His hand was smooth and cocoa colored against my lighter butterscotch.
“You wearing that Babygirl. You look so sexy.” He finally said after staring at me for the longest time. “Now take that shit off!”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. Within a matter of seconds I was naked and waiting for him on the bed. He turned around and locked his door then he came over and put his face in between my legs. I lay back trying to catch my breath as his tongue moved in and out of me real fast like it was a tiny wet snake.
I don’t know when he managed to get his clothes off since he was licking me so good but the next thing I knew he was sliding his thick dick up inside me and I was moaning his name over and over.
I think his Momma heard me screaming at least once cus she gave me a funk y look as I was leaving, but I didn’t care. I knew that night that I was falling in love with P.J. and wasn’t nothing she nor nobody else could do to stop it.
The next day I sat on the stoop sucking on a blow pop the same way I’d suck P.J.’s dick the night before and told Lesha all about it. She stared at me with her big eyes bugging out.
“So you two a couple now?” she asked when I finally stopped talking.
“Yeah. I mean we ain’t said the words, but I know it. Why you ask?”
“I heard that P.J. is a dog.”
“Who told you that?” I had to know cus P.J was the new kid on the block. He’d just moved up to stay with his Momma after his Daddy got shot down in South Carolina. When they split up P.J. and his brother’s stayed with him, and his sister’s moved here with their Mom. His brothers were both married and now his Daddy was dead so P.J. didn’t have no place else to go. That’s why he came to live with his Momma. Nobody knew P.J. around here but his sister’s and now me. Lesha is my girl and I knew she wouldn’t lie but sometimes she carried gossip that didn’t have an ounce of truth in it.
“His sister Marlene. I was talking to her at the Chinese restaurant last night while you was at the movies.”
I remembered seeing all the boxes of leftover Chinese food on the table when me and P.J. came in the night before. My ears perked up.
“What she say? I need to know word for word.”
“Just that he got two babies and two baby mommas down south.”
“Down south? What the fuck I care about some country ass bitches down south? P.J. is mine now. Girl I thought you knew something.”
Lesha sucked her teeth at me. “I’m just saying. He’s new around here and I thought you needed to know cus you my girl.”
“Well P.J. told me all about his kids already so let’s just drop it okay.” I had never lied to my best friend before in my life. Lesha knew everything about me from the first time I got my period to the first dick I sucked. She knew about the time I’d stole 3 CD’s from the record store, and even about the time I got locked up for writing bad checks. Lesha even knew that Georgia Slim was really my Daddy and not that man who was in all the pictures in my house and nobody else knew that but me and Momma.
“So what did he tell you about his kids?”
“None of your damn business!”
Lesha just stared at me as I stood up and walked back up the steps and went inside the building. I know she was wondering what the hell was wrong with me but how could I tell her if I didn’t even know myself.
About three months later P.J. finally did tell me about his kids but it wasn’t the way I wanted to hear it. “What the fuck you mean you pregnant?” he screamed.
“I took one of those home test and the stick turned blue.” I didn’t wanna look at him because I hated it when he screamed at me. We were at his house and his Mom’s and sister’s had gone out. We’d made love in the kitchen, on the living room couch, and in the bedroom. I thought after getting all that good pussy he wouldn’t be so mad when I told him. He was furious. His brown face was changing colors and I was scared he was actually gonna turn red.
“You sure it’s mine! It can’t be mine!”
He was walking around naked swinging his arms mad as hell but I couldn’t help noticing how good his dick looked swinging too as he walked and yelled. Those words should have made me mad but they didn’t. P.J. was only human. Every brother asked that question, it was only natural. “P.J. I’m your girl. You know I wouldn’t do it with nobody else.” I said.
“Look Babygirl, I ain’t neva told you but I already got two kids I can’t afford to feed. Why you think I work so hard and still live with my Momma. If I don’t send $600 dollars a month down south they will come up here and lock my ass up. Do you want me to go to jail?”
The thought of P.J in jail and not with me scared me shitless. There was no way I was gonna let that happen. He was my man now fuck them bamas. “No. I don’t want that P.J. I want you right here with me.”
“Then you know what you gots to do girl.”
I knew but I didn’t want to do it. This baby was a part of me and P.J. and even though I don’t really like kids I wanted to love this one.
“That cost money P.J. I don’t know if I have enough saved up.” I was lying I had almost ten grand in my savings account. I was saving to move out of that apartment and get my own place. I wanted a place for me and P.J. and now my baby.
“Are you asking me for money?” P.J. was getting angry again.
“Can’t you at least pay half?” I said hoping he’d say no. If we couldn’t afford it then we couldn’t do it.
“I just told you where all my money goes, and now you are asking me for more? I thought you were different Babygirl. I thought that you were all about me and all about us. You are just like all those other bitches. You love a nigga for his money and nothing else.” P.J. walked over to his dresser and pulled out a wad of cash. He peeled off three 100 dollar bills and threw them at me while I was still lying on his bed. “That should cover it. Get dressed, and get the fuck out!”
I was about to open my mouth to protest when I heard the locks on the front door turning and realized his Mom and sisters were home. Instead I picked up my clothes, got dressed and left without taking the money. The next morning I stopped by the bank and withdrew some money then I went downtown to the clinic and did what I knew I had to do. I lay on my back and counted the tiles on the ceiling while the doctor used something that looked like a vacuum cleaner to suck my baby out of me. When I was done I listened to the nurse who looked like she’d never had any and desperately needed to get some give me instructions. Then she asked me how was I getting home. She looked at me with pity when I told her I was taking the bus. “It’s a shame when the boy won’t even bring you in.” she said while scribbling on a piece of paper. “Fuck you.” I muttered under my breath as I took the papers and walked out.
A few days later I called P.J. and told him that it was done. He told me to come over that he had the apartment all to himself. I should have smelt the stench as soon as I walked in but I’d live with the smell so long I didn’t recognize it. The sweet smell of love was starting to sour and soon I was gonna know just how bad it would stink.
I ended up back at that same clinic two more times before I finally realized I couldn’t do it no more. I love P.J. but every time he put life inside me, he forced me downtown to have it sucked out. The last time I couldn’t bear to go by myself and P.J. said he had to work that day. I’d finally told Lesha and she held my hand on the bus all the way there and stayed with me through the night while I rocked and cried. I didn’t realize it at the time but a small part of me went down those tubes with my baby each time. Lesha held onto me tightly as I cried and tried to breathe. The smell was growing stronger, and the stench of love was beginning to choke me.
Standing in the bathroom staring at that little blue stick for the fourth time in two years I knew there was nothing P.J could say this time that would make me go through it again. He’d never said the word but I knew P.J loved me. He was just scared. Those bitches in South Carolina were always calling asking for this for the kids, or needing that for the kids. Last Christmas I’d given P.J. $500 bucks to buy toys and send down to them cus they Mommas had spent the child support on nails and fake hair. Those two biddies drained him. But I wasn’t like that and as soon as our baby got here I knew he’d see it my way.
I was gonna wait until I was at least seven months to tell him but one night lying in bed he realized that the tummy bulge was not just extra pizza. P.J. was on top of me grinding his dick into my pussy deep and slow the way I love it when he suddenly jumped off of me. “What the fuck was that?” He said staring at me.
I’d been so lost in the feeling I didn’t realize the baby had just kicked him. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb with me girl. Are you pregnant? I have fucked pregnant women before, I know what I just felt.”
“Come back to bed baby. Your Moms will be home soon.” I said ignoring him. I pulled him back down on top of me and let him stroke it good and deep and slow some more. He was moaning and whispering in my ear when I answered him. “Oh yes baby, you gonna be a Daddy again.” I said while rolling my hips up to meet his thrust.
All of a sudden P.J. started to slam into me hard, really hard. It wasn’t the hard that I liked it was rougher and it hurt. “P.J. stop! That hurts!” I screamed but he wouldn’t. He just kept pounding my pussy harder and harder until finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He came and collapsed on top of me. He lay there for a long time catching his breath. “I’ll go with you to the clinic this time.” He finally said then rolled over off of me.
My thighs were sore and my pussy burned from what he’d just done to me. I didn’t answer him I was in too much pain. I tried to get up but it hurt too much. I pulled my knees up and lay my face on them.
“P.J. you hurt me. Why did you do that?”
“It’s too late ain’t it? Too late for the clinic?”
I nodded my head but I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t believe that he’d just tried to fuck our baby out of me. He was trying to hurt me; he was trying to hurt the baby. The stench of love had never been stronger in the room than at the moment. After a long while I managed to pull myself off the bed and go home.
After that I wouldn’t fuck P.J. anymore. I lied and told him the doctor said I couldn’t. He didn’t like it, but I didn’t care. I told him I’d suck his dick as much as he wanted but my pussy was off limits until after the baby was born. He didn’t like the idea of the baby either but again I didn’t care. The next time I climbed up on a table and a doctor pulled something out of me I was going to take it home whether P.J. liked it or not.
With what was left of my savings I decided to go ahead and move out into my own place. I found a one-bedroom apartment a few blocks away from Fieldcrest. It had a window that overlooked a breath taking view of the alley and a dumpster. The water was brown when you first turned it on, but if you let it run it would turn yellow, then finally clear enough to wash in. The stove had two eyes that worked and one burner in the oven. It didn’t really matter. I’d lost my job in the mailroom at Price Construction since I was sick so much being pregnant and I’d taken one at McDonalds. I could eat anything that was left at the end of the night.
The apartment came partially furnished, if you could call a broken down couch a table with 2 mismatched chairs, and a mattress on the floor propped up on cement blocks furnished. It wasn’t much but it was mine. P.J. came by at least two or three times a week to get his dick sucked like only I could do it. Then he would grumble about the baby, and leave.
I’d watched both my mother and my sister have babies and laughed at the obvious pain they’d felt. But when I woke up in the middle of the night with fire running through my belly I suddenly realized that this shit wasn’t no joke. I tried to call P.J. but I had not paid my cell phone bill and the phone was off. So I managed to put on some shoes, and a jacket and leave my building. I didn’t know any of my neighbors so there was no use in asking for help from crazy ass strangers.
I was headed back to Fieldcrest and just hoped I could make it the three blocks without passing out or giving birth on the street. It was at least eight weeks too soon, but the pain I felt was real I had to get help. I knew it wasn’t the smartest or the safest thing to do, but it was the only choice I had. Besides I grew up on those streets and walked them late at night lots of time. There was nothing out here that could hurt me.
I really believed that until I finally reached my building and stepped inside the lobby. What I saw not only hurt me, it tore me into tiny little pieces that scattered all over the floor.
About five years earlier some people from some big offices downtown had decided to come to the ‘hood’ and spruce it up for all the little poor niggas to live. They’d cleaned up some of the graffiti on the walls, and put chairs in the lobby. Nobody ever sat in them because they were the hard uncomfortable kind with foam rubber cushions covered in ugly plastic and hard wooden arms. Me and P.J. used to joke that those chairs were too hard for sitting; the most good they’d ever been was for leaning over and fucking. In my mind I remembered the time P.J. and me had come home late from the club and his Mom had locked him out. We’d been drinking and smoking weed and both of us wanted to fuck so bad it hurt. I was wearing a really short skirt and P.J. had bent me over one of those hard chairs and fucked me from behind. That late at night no one else would be coming or going from the building but even if they did we didn’t care. I was moaning and screaming cus his dick felt so good inside me.
Suddenly I realized it wasn’t me who was moaning. It wasn’t my pussy he was stroking. It was the middle of the night and with the worst pain of my life rushing through my belly I stood speechless as I watched P.J. stroking his dick in and out of someone else who was bent over the same chair. She must have loved it as much as I did because the echo of her moans filled the whole lobby. She was moaning so loud it’s a wonder either of them heard me when I screamed. “P.J.! What the fuck are you doing?”
He stopped and turned around, and so did that apple bottomed bitch. That’s when the realest pain a woman could ever feel rushed through me like a roaring freight train. It wasn’t a labor pain; it was the pain of betrayal. Lesha’s big eyes stared at me as P.J. pulled his dick out of her and scrambled for his pants.
I started running but the smell kept following me. It was chasing me and screaming my name. The stench of love got closer and closer and I couldn’t breathe anymore it was inside my mouth and made my nostrils burn. I finally got to my apartment and slammed the door shut as tight and turned all the locks hoping the lock the smell of love outside.
I tumbled onto my bed into a ball and felt a trickle of blood run down my leg. I’d forgotten my baby; I’d forgotten I was in labor. I ran to my tiny bathroom and the blood went from trickles to splatters. I sat or fell; I don’t know which one but found myself in a sitting position on the floor as blood ran from my body. The pain took over as I looked in between my legs and saw a tiny foot slide out.
My baby never took a breath. She slid out of me onto the nasty porcelain floor already dead. When the pain in between my legs finally stopped I grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the cord that had connected her life to mine, then I scooped her bloody body up off the floor and wrapped her in a tiny blanket that my Mom had given me when I moved out. I took her to my bedroom and climbed into bed. The blood on the both of us and the bed had dried and was hard but I was still on my bed rocking and singing her lullabies when the sun came up the next morning, and when it went down the next evening. I loved my baby, as she lay in my arms and began to stink. Finally when it was pitch black, I dragged my aching body off of my bed and put her lifeless body inside a hefty bag. I took her and the weeks trash out to the dumpster and tossed them both inside.
Several hours or maybe it was days later the sound of knocking woke me up out of a deep sleep. I didn’t remember coming back inside, I didn’t remember falling asleep. I finally found my way to the front door and opened it. The stench of love was all over my body as I saw P.J. standing there.
This trifling ass nigga had the nerve to grin at me. I heard the words “I’m sorry” fall out of his mouth and I wondered how long he’d known I was a fool. I stepped aside and invited him.
I thought it would hurt more, when I fucked P.J. less than 2 days after giving birth to a dead baby but by then I was numb. I didn’t feel any pleasure or pain. All I could feel was disgust. I’d told him our baby was dead, and outside in the dumpster and he’d let a smile spread across his trifling face without realizing it. Then he pulled me to bed. The nasty ass bastard didn’t even notice the sheets were still stained with blood before he was on top of me poking and grunting. I lay under him and hoped that he came really fast and really hard because it would be the last nut of his life.
As he slept I tried to talk myself out of killing P.J. rationalizing that I wasn’t no killer. But as I sat and thought about it I realized that I was. I had killed before. I killed because of the stench called love. Besides that P.J thought that killing was the right thing, it was the only thing to do he’d told me once. Because of him I’d killed four babies. Killing one more person I loved would be easy.
I went under the cushion of my living room couch and found the gun that my Uncle gave me to hide when the police were after him. He’d been in lock up four years and I thought of the gun as mine.
I held it in my hands and fingered the cold steel as I walked back to the bedroom. P.J. had rolled his sorry ass over and was snoring lying on his side with his back to me. It was a perfect target for the five bullets I slowly emptied into it. Then just to make sure I put the chamber next to the back of his head, pulled the trigger, and watched his brain splatter onto my pillow.
I sat in my bedroom surrounded by the stench of love for three days. That’s when my neighbors finally realized that the noise they’d heard two days before had not been a car backfiring and the smell of my undying love for P.J. began to find it’s way under the doorway and float up the hall. I told the police where to find my baby so she’d get a proper burial. By then I knew she’d begun to stink like the shitty diapers she never got to wear. She stank like the garbage that was piled on top of her. She stank even worse than P.J.’s rotting corpse sitting beside me. My baby stank because of love.
My cellmate just stared at me as I finally stopped talking. I supposed she never thought she’d hear so much just by asking me if I’d ever been in love. Maybe I should have kept my answer short and sweet. “Yeah I’ve been in love, and love stinks.”
