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“I’ve been watching your figure for a long time and I can tell you, it’s all good.”
I didn’t know how to feel about this statement. Sitting there, my first inclination was to be offended that he was admitting that he’d “watched” me. Dame was a kid. He may have grown up now—in a lot of visible ways—but to me, he was still a student. But then, there was another side of me, the side that had spent too much time picking out the dress I was wearing that felt like I looked good when I walked out of the house and was happy that someone noticed—there was nothing worse than when no one noticed. This side wanted to point out how nicely the red wrap dress held up my breasts and accentuated my hips. She wanted to get up and do a runway walk through Dreamland. But instead, I decided to settle her down and calm the odd moment at the table with a bit of comedy. A big girl joke.
“Spare me. No one likes a fat girl,” I said, laughing. But Dame didn’t budge.
“You have a point. I hate fat girls. I only date big girls,” he said.
“What’s the difference?” I asked.
“You ever notice how women who say they’re ‘fat’ never seem happy about it? They say it like it’s negative—a curse or something. Now, big girls—when they say they’re ‘big,’ they say it with pride and confidence. They know they look good and that’s a turnon,” he explained and I was completely intrigued by this idea. “They know what they want and how to get it. Most big girls are like that. And they know how to treat you.”
“Oh, you mean you can run all over them because they’re big?”
“No, what I mean is, they aren’t all worried about silly stuff that doesn’t matter—calories and impressing their damn friends with a bunch of labels,” he said. “I get enough of that from these industry broads.”
“Exactly,” I said. “You say you like big girls, but the last time I checked the gossip columns, you were dating Madison Night—that actress from Moonlight. She’s like ninety pounds.”
“See, that’s what they want you to think.” He smiled. “You can’t trust everything you see on television—my publicist makes most of that stuff up and leaks it to people. Really, I was trying to get at Madison’s sister. She’s like 300 pounds.” He pretended to draw the girl’s ample shape in the air, but I could tell he was joking.
“I’m sure,” I said drily.
“I don’t know what’s made you think you’re anything but bad as hell,” Dame said, catching my eyes again. “Half the time we were joking in the back of the classroom, we were talking about how fine you were and placing bets on who’d get with you first.”
“Are you kidding?” I asked, surprised. I always imagined I looked goofy from the back of the room. Old and tired to them.
“Hell, no!” he said. “We were just boys then, though. We knew none of us stood a chance. But that was then ... and this is now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t tell you all my secrets now.”
The waiter slid our plates onto the table like gifts, and Dame and I sat back in a moment of silence, inhaling the tangy scent of BBQ as our eyes began to feast on the spread.
“I’s home now, Ms. Celie. I’s home,” Dame cried playfully.
My father always said that good BBQ tastes like meat and great BBQ tastes like butter. I tasted nothing but butter on my plate. It was dreamlike, and I wondered how Evan and I had managed to stay away from the place for so long. I made a mental note to make him take me there the next week.
“So,” Dame started, wiping his mouth, “what do you think of my music?”
“Think?”
“Yeah, that was a direct question.” He looked at me and then threw his hands up in disgust after I said nothing. “You don’t listen to it?”
“Oh, I’ve heard some ... but ... I ... well, I’m not listening to much rap right now,” I tried.
“Don’t give me that cop-out. That’s what lazy people say. They complain that there’s no good hip-hop, so they don’t listen to it. But really, there’s plenty of good stuff out there. You just have to look for it.”
“I guess you’re right,” I said.
“So what made you stop listening to me?”
I looked at him and started chewing at the inside of my lips nervously. I didn’t want to offend him.
“Don’t be shy,” he said. “I’m an artist, not a student. You can’t hurt my feelings.”
“It’s just that all the stuff I heard was about sex and violence and drugs. It seemed like the same old rap music. Nothing new.”
“You’re right,” he mused. “I do write about sex ... and violence ... and drugs. And let me say this—”
