Best Black Women's Erotica

Table of Contents

 

 

 

“sex hall” by MR Daniel originally appeared in
Best Lesbian Erotica 2001,
edited by Tristan Taormino, Cleis Press, 2001. “That's What Friends Are For” by Nilaja A. Montgomery originally appeared in
Pillow Talk II,
edited by Lesléa Newman, Alyson Publication, 2000.

Thank you Cleis Press—Frédérique, Felice and Don—for trusting me with this project. Thank you for your support, your expertise, your love and your patience.

Thanks to The Marcus Books Reading Club for all the cheerleading, for your support and mostly for the friendship. You all are the best! Thanks also to my customers who have been so supportively enthusiastic about this book. I love and appreciate each and every one of you.

To the staff of Marcus Book Stores—my family—for allowing me the time to work on this project. Thank you Karen, thank you Billy, thank you Tamiko, thank you “Face,” thank you Donald Ray Young, thank you Roxanne, thank you Nikki, thank you Carolyn, and thank you James.

I am truly blessed to have my writer friends who have encouraged me, supported me, pushed me to write, shared their expertise, been my best friends and loved me unconditionally. Thank you Terry McMillan, Tina McElroy Ansa, E. Lynn Harris, Tananarive Due, Iyanla Vanzant, Paula Woods, and Felix Liddell.

For keeping me grounded, I thank my grandchildren, Hank and D'Asia. You may now collect on all the personal time I owe you.

For keeping me working when I whined and complained by telling me to “get back to the mine, Shine, there'll be no strike today,” I owe my sanity to my mother Raye who supported, loved, cooked for me and taught me, from the cradle, the beauty of the written word. I am so very proud to be your daughter.

And to Cherysse—for
everything
.

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know about you, but my body parts have names. My hands I call “Fric and Frac.” My legs are known as “Sticks and Bones.” My breasts I refer to as “Gussie and Gertie.” My behind is affectionately known as “Waelene.” The fact that she isn't doesn't really matter. Then there's “Molly.” Every woman has a Molly. Sometimes she's called “Puntang.” Others may call her “Bubbles.” When I first heard someone refer to her as “Vagina,” I had no idea who or what she was talking about.

“You mean ‘Virginia,' don't you?”

“No!” my classmate responded emphatically, “It's called a vagina. V-a-g-i-n-a. That's the proper name for it.”

Rather impersonal, don't you think? Then again, many women, particularly Black women, have a very impersonal relationship with their “M-o-l-l-y.” It's a historical thang.

My grandmother, coming from the South and growing up in the church like she did, only knew Molly to be a betrayer. Based on her experiences as a sharecropper's daughter, Molly was someone who could be used against you. Her Molly, no
doubt, was a source of sin and shame. Once she even told me that her mother, my great-grandmother, had been raped repeatedly by a group of lumberjacks. So brutal was the attack, my great-granny was unable to walk for weeks. The fact that she eventually went on to have six children was both blessing and curse. “She died,” Grandma said, “at the age of thirty-two from some dreaded disease
down there.”
She remembered her mother as a soft-spoken, kind-hearted woman who had died too early, leaving six children under the age of ten. To my grandma, Molly was a thief who had robbed her of a mother. In essence, Molly was a problem.

My mother never talked to me about sex. She was a proud woman of Caribbean heritage who honestly believed that women were subservient to men. Women, and their body parts, had two main purposes: 1) to work hard; and 2) to serve and satisfy men. My mother never talked to me about the pleasures or the intricacies of an intimate sexual experience. She never told me that sexual activity was good for my health. Nor did she tell me about the beautiful experiences of sexual exploration—with self or with others. “Don't worry about such things,” she said. “When you need to know, you will know.” In fact, to women of my mother's generation, expressions of sexuality and the notion of a woman's sexual identity were dirty. What momma did do was warn me. She warned me never to display Molly publicly. She warned me about all the trouble Molly could get me into if I allowed people to touch her or talk to her. She went so far as to warn me about sitting on men's laps, telling me that I could catch something—like pregnancy. “That's silly!” I thought. Still, I made it a point never to
sit
on men. Instead, I lay down with them.

Molly had a name, but she and I were not actually connected. She was not connected to my hands, my legs, my breasts, or my heart. Somehow, grandma's stories and momma's stories had infiltrated my head. There was a slight
disconnect between Molly and the rest of my body. Many times, Molly caused me pain and shame. I got
caught
doing things with Molly that momma had warned me not to do. Many times, Molly made alliances that caused my heart grief. It always seemed that the people she liked didn't like her back. After Molly had fostered the birth of three children, she lost her youthfulness, her playfulness. Her response time was slower. Some of her associates even commented on her size. They couldn't get close to her, they said. She was not as affectionate as they thought she should be. Molly did her best, but, I finally realized, she had changed. She had matured. She was run-down, not feeling good about herself. We had a talk, Molly and I. That's when I decided to change her name to “Mabel.” It seemed to more appropriately describe her state of being. Stately. Soft spoken. Useful, but somewhat removed from the fullness of her nature.

As women, so many of us are deprived of a healthy respect of and connection to our sexuality. For some, it is shrouded in so much shame by so many convoluted messages that we actually become detached from our sexual identities. We like sex, but we can't talk about it. We engage in sex, but we are, at times, afraid to enjoy it. When we do enjoy the act, and our partners, we are often subjected to ridicule and heartbreak. It can get confusing and tiring. How can something so good be bad for you? How can something that feels so good cause so much pain? It's a question that we still ask ourselves today. Fortunately, however, we are talking more about it.

As women, we are exploring our sexuality and exhibiting our sexual identity from a more integrated perspective. We've got our heads involved now. We are thinking about what we are doing. We've got our hearts involved now. We are not allowing feelings to drive us or deprive us. We are talking more now, about our Mollys and Mabels. We are sharing and comparing notes on how to care for this part of ourselves.
How to preserve this aspect of our beings and bodies. How to satisfy our needs as an expression of, and with respect for, who we are as women. We no longer hide our sexuality. Instead, we are exploring and defining it, privately and publicly. We are no longer willing to accept our sexual identity as a “dependent appendage.” We no longer limit sexuality to our body parts. We are discovering our sexual nature to be a source of creativity. A wellspring of our health, and a source of pleasure for which we are now willing to accept full responsibility in manifestng. Mabel has come into her fullness. She is now known in a very private arena as “Peaches and Cream.” She is not just a “Lunchable,” she's a full course meal!

As you move through the pages of this book, do not just read the words; feel them. Undoubtedly, they will trigger your own memories of some stories you've been told that you may want to rewrite. The stories you will read here may evoke uncomfortable feelings that you may need to come to grips with on your own journey to a deeper understanding and greater appreciation of our sexual identity and nature. From a more practical aspect, you may want to consider that the fullness of sexual expression as orgasm drains your lymph nodes. In women, lymph nodes are actively involved in several forms of cancer. You may not be aware that the enzymes released throughout your body at the height of sexual arousal lubricate your skin. You may find it interesting that the same number of calories you burn with one good, thirty-second orgasm, would take twenty minutes to burn on a treadmill. If that's not enough to convince you that erotic activity and thoughts are good for you, how about the plain old truth that it's pleasurable! It's fun! Most of all, it's private. For all the years of service to others, don't you and Molly or Mabel or Peaches—or V-a-g-i-n-a—deserve to have a little fun? Why not relax and enjoy? You'll feel a lot better.

 

 

 

 

 

There is nothing worse than to be awakened from a great sleep for no apparent reason. I lay there in the dark, refusing to open my eyes, hoping like hell that my mind and body would take the hint and go back to sleep. After thirty-five minutes and countless tosses and turns, I gave up, sat up, switched on the bedside lamp, and tried to get my bearings straight.

I was here in Aruba, a four-hour plane ride from my cozy little New York apartment, finishing up preproduction chores for the new music video by Keisha, the latest rage in the young, uni-moniker (think Aaliyah, Monica, Brandy), R & B chart busters. My job as a producer at SunFire Productions was to help make these nymphet divas (and their male counterparts) as saleable as possible. It was a tough job, but one I still adored after nearly eight years.

I glanced over at the clock and noted with a groan that it was only 6:47 a.m. I was supposed to check out Malmock Beach in the late-morning light, which gave me at least another three hours of sleep—if only my mind would cooperate with my travel-weary body. But it was soon clear that it
wouldn't, so I reached over and grabbed the stack of magazines I'd brought with me.

I quickly breezed through the always-entertaining
Jet
before taking on
Essence,
where I learned that it was indeed possible to love both God and sex. Thank goodness for that bit of heartening news. Several pages apart was a lovely pictorial of bridal gowns that promised to “satisfy the soul.” Seemed to me that there was nothing a wedding dress could do for my soul that God and/or sex couldn't do better. Then again, being thirty-six years old and single, I wouldn't know.

Moving on, I picked up the latest
Elle
and flipped through eighty pages of advertisements before finding anything to read. Uninterested in the return of the '70s style rock 'n' roll T-shirts, I gave up and reached for
Marie Claire
. The magazine fell open to a very interesting article indeed—“Sexual Secrets You Are Entitled to Know.”