Black Spiders...Or Something Like That

      My momma used to tell me that if I wanted me a man, it wasn’t enough to be pretty or to be good in the bedroom.  I also had to know my way around a kitchen.

         “Honey, you could give the best blow job in the world, but it wouldn’t matter one bit if you can’t cook a lick.  Man wants to know that after you fuck ‘im, you gonna feed him like a king.  If you want you a man, it ain’t enough to do one or the other.  You’ve got to do both.”

         It’s what my momma used to always say, and I believed my momma.  She was as pretty as could be, cooked like a chef, and…well, I don’t know exactly what she did in the bedroom, but by the sounds that I heard coming from the other side of the wall, seemed like she knew what she was doing.

         And they treated her like a queen for her what she did for them .  George—her first husband—bought her lots of nice things:  cars and jewelry.  My momma used to like that, especially the jewelry.  She still has that diamond he gave her.  It’s a big old rock that’ll blind you when it sparkles in the sunlight. 

         And then David—he was my daddy and her second husband—had three big houses and a couple of boats.   

         His favorite meal was shrimp scampi and pasta.  He used to say that when my momma cooked shrimp pasta for him, it made him want to love her more and more.

         I guess I was too young at the time to understand what he was saying, but later I figured out that after momma cooked him his favorite meal, he liked to give her a horizontal thank-you.

         Years later, he was “thanking” her when he died. 

         It sure was sad when David died, but he left everything to my momma and me, a few million dollars, so she wouldn’t ever have to work again.

         Momma started teaching me to cook and to bake when I could barely walk.  By the time I was fifteen, I knew my way around the  kitchen better than the back of my own hand.  When I was sixteen, she took me to strip clubs where half-naked women danced for men, on stages or up close and personal.  Momma told me those were “lap dances”.

         “You want me to do that, Momma?” I asked her one day.

         “I want you to learn to move like that.  See how they look the men look at the ladies?  They’re enraptured, but it’ll only last as long as that dance.  You want it so that when you’re man looks at you like that, it’ll be forever.  Then they’ll want to eat.  You feed ‘em, and then they’ll be yours for as long as you want them. You hear?”

         I nodded and learned everything I needed to know.

         I graduated from high school and then set about finding a man.  My momma used to tell me that if I found the right man, I’d never work.  Since Thomas died, she hadn’t worked in years.

         I met Christopher at the beach.  I had on my favorite bikini that showed my body for what it was:  a promise of great,  unrelenting sex.

         He took to me like a bee to honey.

         When that was done, I cooked for him.  His favorite food was fried catfish.  I whipped up the best fried catfish he’d ever tasted, and from that moment, he never looked back.

         We were married within a month. It was a lavish wedding.  Chris knew hundreds of people; there were even people from TV and magazines. 

         Momma couldn’t have been more proud.

         Chris couldn,t have been any happier, and I kept him in bliss for two years. 

         He was eating his beloved fried catfish when he died.

         A year later, I met Steven at a party.  He didn’t look like anything when I first met him but I gave that nerd all of my attention.  He couldn’t believe his good luck.  I probably could’ve easily sealed the deal without having to cook for him, but my momma raised me better than that.

         His favorite dish was quiche.  It took me about a minute to learn how to make it, and when I realized that you could make all different kinds of quiche…well, for Steven, it was all she wrote.

         He married me in a on a private beach in Fiji.  We flew there on his private jet.  Momma came with us, of course, with Rick, her fiance. 

         We were in the newspapers and the gossip shows again, but then I began to notice some of the stories were kind of negative.  Like why my momma was married so many times, and was I going down the same path?  There was some other stuff, too, like "possible investigations" and something about "black spiders" or some shit.  It pissed me off and I would turn off the TV.

         I worried that Steven might believe those stories.  He had friends who I’m pretty sure kept telling him that me and momma were bad news. 

         But Steven loved and trusted me completely, even on that last day, but at least he died happy:  he’d been eating quiche.

         But Steven’s death made headlines across the nation.  On the news channels, they said things like “murder” and called for autopsies and arrests.

         Thank god for my momma.  She had the good sense to figure out that we needed to leave the country.  We took the private jet Rick had left her in his will and flew to Germany.  We decided we’d be single for a while.

         That was, until I met Jurgen.  He was big and fat, dangerously obese in fact, but one of Germany’s richest playboys.  He wanted me the minute he saw me.

          Afterwords, I found out what his favorite food was, which of course, explained the weight.

         Cake.

        It'd probably be the death of him.