Don’t Speak On Fresh Cutz Part Three: Too Close
DON’T SPEAK ON FRESH CUTZ
PART Three: Too Close
A week after the robbery, Fresh Cutz reopened like it never even left. To his credit, Ryan got the look of the shop together pretty quickly. And even though the shop appeared pristine, the robbery was still the topic of conversation.
“The world ain’t like it used to be,” Vontae said as he spun the chair his client sat in to get a 360 view of his fade. “People really out here robbing Fresh Cutz. Robbing Cutz? Robbing your own people?”
“People been stealing since the beginning of time, man,” Panda said as he finished up his own client, sweeping a small brush along the client’s head and shoulders to make sure all the shaven bits fell onto the floor. Panda nodded at his son, a high schooler named Matt who worked at the shop during the summer. Matt shuffled over to Panda’s station to sweep up the fluffy mess.
“I still can’t believe someone robbed this place. You do good for the neighborhood. Got the shop cleaned up real nice though. Know who did it?” Vontae’s client asked as Vontae circled around him to make sure his cut was even.
“Ryan still finishing investigating but damn sure wasn’t me,” Vontae said. “Probably one of them youngins. Out here mugging instead of in summer school where they need to be. Couldn’t be me.”
“Couldn’t be you cuz you dropped out a long time ago,” Panda laughed and Vontae walked up to him and pretended he was gonna put him in a headlock. The other barbers and people in the waiting area chuckled as Vontae launched into another one of his far-fetched stories about how he grew up.
I chuckled as I combed out my client’s hair at my station, and shot a glance at Stassia who was braiding hair in the chair next to mine. Vontae be lying, but a lot of the men here do. Stassia told me when I first started working here that I’d hear a lot of fabricated, often ignorant storytimes, and the best thing to do was either let myself be entertained or let the conversation serve as background music while we focus on our own clients.
Focus was important for a new barber like me, but I wondered if Stassia still needed to focus when she braided hair. She made it look so easy. A young woman sat in her chair and Stassia was doing small, overlapping cornrows with wooden beads on the ends. Her fingers weaved through the strands of hair like machinery, and sometimes she didn’t even look at what she was doing to get a perfect finish in a short amount of time.
“But here’s the thing. Thugs like me back in the day, we robbed cuz we had to. But now? You got these kids staring in they phones on Twitters absorbing that 5G,” Vontae pointed his finger to his head. “Messing with their minds. I saw a YouTube video about it.” He pulled out his phone from his bag and started searching for the video.
“Ion’t even keep my phone in my pocket. Y’all keep your phone in your pocket?” Vontae asked to nobody in particular. “Ion’t do that shit. Make your dick stop working. That’s why there’s always a Metro PCS in the hood. Trying to make us buy phones so we can’t procreate and grow the Black family. Think about it. Metro. PCS. They trying to make us metrosexual so we can be pro cock sucking?”
“I did hear something about that,” Panda said. “I mean, it makes sense. Society wants to emasculate the Black man.”
“You never lied,” said T Rex, a quieter barber in the shop. “Y’all seen the BET Awards? Men kissing men on TV now?”
The shop volume increased by about ten as everyone started shouting over each other, but Vontae’s voice managed to break through. “Life really ain’t what it used to be. I try to mind my business but that gay shit? This what happens with that 5G and fluoride in the water,” Vontae said. “Let me break it down. Fluoride. Flow-ride.” Vontae enunciated each part of the word for emphasis, clapping his hand together on each syllable. “Male bootyholes flowing while they ride? Listen to what they feeding us! That’s why I be telling y’all to watch this YouTube video, it’s long but I swear once you watch it…”
I shot another look at Stassia, who looked back at me with a knowing smirk and rolled her eyes. For allegedly straight niggas, barbershop niggas sure loved talking about men fucking.
I tuned out their conversation and focused on finishing up my client’s caesar. “For what it’s worth, I have nothing against gayness at all,” I said in a low voice to them. They nodded at me and returned their attention to their phone. Sometimes it feels like the only people here who care about these ignorant conversations are me, Stassia, and Big P.
I took out my phone and sent Stassia a text. Wanna go to Milo’s tn? Fury Untamed playing. A few minutes later, my phone buzzed with her response. Bet.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“This why I tell you Fresh Cutz not all that.” Stassia knocked back a shot of whiskey and chased it with Beck’s, her signature. “I wanna work somewhere else but don’t know where else to go. I feel like I gotta watch my back everywhere.”
Stassia took a long draw of a blunt I rolled and coughed like it was her first time smoking. I rubbed her back as I knocked back my own shot. We were sitting at the bar at Milo’s, a small Black-owned juke joint on the outskirts of the city, thankful to sit after standing doing hair all day.
The bar started getting more crowded as the main act, a local punk rock band named Fury Untamed, warmed up. The drummer was the only one on the stage, sitting behind an expansive drum set and pushing his curly afro behind his ears. He was kind of cute, and part of the reason I liked this band so much. The singer was my favorite though. They were drinking beer beside the bar’s small stage, their blue buzzcut glittering underneath the stage lights.
“Thanks for bringing me here. The shop conversation today really got to me.” Stassia turned to look at me and squeezed my hand, then looked down at the floor. “Don’t know why.”
“It was fucked up, that’s why,” I said as I wrapped my arms around her. I asked the bartender for two more shots of whiskey and turned to Stassia as I reached into my pocket. “I have a little surprise for us.” I pulled out two tiny greyish white tablets and held them in my palm. Stassia took one and swallowed it dry.
“Damn girl you not even gon’ ask what it is?” I said, looking at Stassia with my eyebrow raised before swallowing my pill dry, too. We bust out laughing, and our two additional shots came out just in time.
“Aight, I should be good now.” Stassia giggled, slamming the empty glass onto the bar. She nuzzled her face into my neck, resting her hand on my knee.
I swear if I wasn’t so brown my cheeks would stay red around Stassia all the time. She was wearing a slinky red dress with skinny straps that kept falling off her shoulders, and a high slit that exposed her right hip. I wore a black bodysuit with fishnets and my silver holographic platform heels, and I hoped she thought I looked good.
I slid my fingers along her arm and placed one of her straps back onto her shoulder, and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. I felt myself getting lost in her face as the drugs started kicking in. Her nose, broad and round, her lips, full and brown and soft, her eyes, so big and brown with those fluttering lashes that she gets done every two weeks. She had light freckles on both of her cheeks that she always tries to cover with foundation but always peek through. She hates them, but I love them.
The bar started to buzz with excitement as the lead singer of Fury Untamed finally got on the stage. All the lights and colors in the small jukejoint were so beautiful. Even the dust looked like butterflies floating through the air.
“Dance with me,” Stassia grabbed my hand and pulled me into the crowd in front of the stage. The crowd smelled like beer and aftershave and sweat, but when I stood behind Stassia, my arms wrapped around her shoulders and her butt resting against my groin, I smelled Blue Magic and cloves. I inhaled as deep as I could. I wanted to smell her forever.
Fury Untamed started off loud and strong, as they always do, and the crowd pulsed. People jumped up and down, some danced like white girls. Stassia couldn’t stop laughing and her laugh is infectious so neither could I.
She grinded up against me, whining her body, and I put my hands on her hips and kissed her neck. She turned around and wrapped her arms around my neck and nibbled on my bottom lip, and flicked her tongue against it, and I kissed her and kissed her as the crowd pulsated around us.
In the middle of Fury Untamed’s set, Stassia took my hand again and pulled me towards the back of the bar toward the bathrooms. We giggled as we stumbled into the stall. She pressed her body against me, and it turns me on now even thinking about it, how good it felt to have her like that, her breasts against mine. We twirled our tongues together as she fiddled with her groin to take off her panties and untuck, and she rubbed her dick against the closure of my bodysuit, the thin fabric the only thing keeping her from my clit. I spit into my hand and rubbed on her tip lightly with my fingers. It was so hard and smooth and my heart was beating so hard in my chest I thought it would burst. Our mouths were open against each other, sharing each other’s breath. I wanted to suck on her so bad. I wanted to lightly kiss the tip, then slobber over it as I put the whole thing in my mouth.
Stassia fiddled with the closure on my bodysuit until it unclipped, and she tried to pull down my fishnets but ended up tearing them in her desperation to get to my pussy. She put her fingers against the opening of my pussy and exhaled loudly and put her fingers in her mouth, closing her eyes and savoring me before playing with my clit again. I turned around and she put herself inside me, and I came immediately and she came a couple minutes after, and we laughed and laughed and laughed as we clumsily put our clothes back on.
We stumbled out of the stall and to the sinks to wash our hands. A couple of people in the corner of bathroom doing coke turned to look at us briefly before turning back to their own vices.
“You really giving me every reason to stop messing with Ryan, huh?” I chuckled as we went back into the packed bar.
Stassia took my hand in hers. “I actually need to tell you about that nigga…”
“It’s okay. I figured you fucked him.” I’m not naive. She called him Mr. Skinny Dick a week prior, and I wasn’t the one who told Stassia about the girth of his penis, or the lack thereof. A sick feeling formed in the pit of my stomach, and I couldn’t tell if I needed to throw up or if I was jealous.
“Oh, yeah…” Stassia stopped walking and looked at me with a smirk. “But that was before y’all started fucking. I was going to tell you—”
“It’s really okay, he’s community dick…”
“No…I mean yeah he is, but that’s not what I needed to tell you.” Stassia started laughing at nothing in particular. We were both rolling out of our minds.
Stassia took my face in her hands, her pupils the size of saucers, and giggled again before she drunkenly dropped a bomb on me.
“You so busy worrying about who fucking him…but girl, guess who robbed him?”
Umm! Nyah definitely wasn’t expecting that. What does Stassia know about what’s been happening at the barbershop? Why is she waiting till now to tell Nyah? And how will Nyah move forward with her situationship with Ryan? Tune in the third weekend of July to see part four of “Don’t Speak on Fresh Cutz.”
