Desire Lines by Cary Alan Johnson

Author:Cary Alan Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Querelle Press
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15. No Man’s Land

After the night of the ambassador’s reception, Regina spends her weekends with the Baby Dictator, and I work hard at keeping my opinion to myself. She tells me how they pass the days hanging out by the palace pool, playing tennis on one of the well-tended courts, or sallying from nightclub to flashy nightclub in armored convoys. Every Friday before she heads to the capital, she begs me to join them.

“Naw girl, I don’t want to be a third wheel,” I tell her.

I have less than zero interest in cavorting with the two of them. The Dictator is guilty of unspeakable acts—everything from murdering political opponents to pocketing massive kickbacks from foreign aid schemes. To me, there’s no daylight between Regina’s new boyfriend and his father’s dirty deeds. I couldn’t fake ignorance or indifference to these crimes. My murderous inclinations might resurface, and then where would we be? I figure that she’ll eventually get bored with her suitor, or her political values will resurface. In the meantime, I stay busy with teaching and reading.

“You think he’s a pig?” she asks me facetiously one day after she’s been seeing the heir apparent for a couple of months. We’re sitting on her porch, eating two ripe, red mangoes she’s picked from a tree in the yard. Her lips and fingers are wet with their juice.

She already knows my answer, so I assume that her question is rhetorical.

“It’s insane, right? I come from a family of White Liberals, and I’m screwing the African despot.” She offers a sarcastic laugh.

I’m relieved that at least she sees the irony of the situation.

“But the dick is magnifique.”

I can relate. I’ve been attracted to men who weren’t good for me—who weren’t even good people. But Regina knows the history of this country as well as I do, how the Dictator and his family have grown rich by exploiting the misery of others, how anyone brave enough to speak out is summarily silenced. I don’t understand how she can swallow these contradictions. Regina is a strange one—never fully one thing or another, always straddling. This time she’s got one foot in political correctness, and the other in wanton desire.

“It would drive my father crazy if he knew,” she says as if this explains everything.

For a woman who seems to enjoy bending men to her will, so many of her choices are driven by the potential reactions of another man, her father, though he is three thousand miles away.

“I can write him for you if you’d like,” I offer, and we both fall out laughing.

When the Peace Corps Director gets wind of Regina’s relationship, he threatens to kick her out. She promptly reminds him that her grandfather is a six-term Illinois state senator with more than a few high-placed contacts on Washington appointment committees. She goes on to invite him or anyone else who isn’t happy with her choice of suitors to kindly kiss her black ass. Regina never fails to refer to her ass as black when it’s time, in her opinion, for someone to kiss it.

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