Black Silk
• In “Roses, Red Room 416,” a sophisticated boho sistah addicted to an outrageously sensual lover gets an unforgettable
lesson…
• When a newly married woman decides to say “Good-Bye” forever to her unfaithful ex-boyfriend, she is swept away by a desperate
erotic promise—and faces a reckless choice…
• Self-sufficient and savvy, the heroine of “Me Between My Own” searches for satisfaction—only to discover that ultimate
sexual fulfillment lies unexpectedly close…
• In “Undoings in Amsterdam,” a young American lesbian hungry for experience tours a place far off the map, where the rules—and cultural differences—are no match for a transforming desire…
Black Silk
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2002 by Retha Powers
Contributions copyright: “Jalapeño Love” © 2002 by Bil Wright, “Planting” © 2002 by s smith, “Goodbye” © 2002 by Eric Jerome
Dickey, “Kiwi” © 2002 by Jacqueline Woodson, “Fucking the Fat Man” © 2002 by Breena Clarke, “One-Night Stand” © 2002 by Bernice
L. McFadden, “Venus in Scorpio” © 2002 by TaRessa Stovall, “Roses, Red, Room 416” © 2002 by Lolita Files, “Stores” © 2002
by Reginald Harris, “The Dawn of Our World” © 2002 by Carolyn Ferrell, “Pisces” © 2002 by Anne Atall, “Me Between My Own”
© 2002 by Camika Spencer, “Fish Eyes” © 2002 by Kim McLarin, “Undoings in Amsterdam” © 2002 by Janet McDonald, “The Sexiest
Seconds” © 2002 by Kiini Ibura Salaam, “Revelation” © 2002 by Elissa G. Perry, “Summer in the City” © 2002 by Margaret Johnson-Hodge,
“Beachwear” © 2002 by devorah major, “The Princess and the Cop” © 2002 by Kathleen Morris, “Popsicles, Donuts, and Reefah”
© 2002 by Bruce Morrow, “The Blue Globes” © 2002 by Thomas Glave, “A Different Drummer” © 2002 by Cheo Tyehimba, “Maya” ©
2002 by Jennifer Jazz, “The Warm and Quiet Storm” © 2002 by Andrew Oyefesobi, “Sausage Boy” © 2002 by Robin Coste Lewis, “If
Only” © 2002 by Krystal G. Williams, “In the Rain” © 2002 by Travis Hunter, “She Cums Every Nite…” © 2002 by Jacqueline Powell,
“Specialgrl Meets Gntlwmn” © 2002 by Darris, “He Makes Love Like a Woman” © 2002 by Carl Weber, “Mojo Lover” © 2002 by Donna
Hill.
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc.,
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com
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First eBook Edition: February 2002
ISBN: 978-0-7595-2689-1
Contents
Flip the historical coin of black sexuality and we’re faced with one of two images. One image cast holds the legacy of the
beastly images of wanton black women and sex-crazed black men that gave permission to abuse and silence. These oversexualized
stereotypes were married to the other side of the coin—Mammy and Uncle Ben. It was largely the effects of the first image
that led to an attempt to counteract the sting of shame by concealing these pictures with a portrait that was upright and
chaste, leaving us with a pentimento of our sexual inheritance.
We lacked our own holistic images that would embrace all aspects of ourselves and acknowledge the power and beauty of our
passion. Fortunately, we were able to look to strong and creative individuals to reclaim the territory of our sexuality. Although
the faces on the coin are still present, artistic and popular images of black folks with full and self-defined sexual selves
have subversively emerged. Whether in the form of a bawdy song by Bessie Smith, later screen gems like Pam Grier’s Coffy and
Friday Foster, or D’Angelo’s open sexuality, these artists have inspired a primal response. And whatever you may think of
Lil’ Kim, she is certainly singing a postmodern version of “Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do.” Until recently our own spin
peeked through mostly in music, television, and film, so this collection captures an exciting direction for black writers.
Black Silk
is the language of body to body, a language that is elusive and essential, specific and universal.
Dear reader, put that old coin in your pocket and immerse yourself in stories through which black writers have minted their
own erotic currency.
Black Silk
contains thirty-one original stories by women and men who fully embrace eroticism with incredible diversity. The writers
herein represent some of today’s best, working in a variety of genres from literary to commercial, from romance to magical
realism. Some of the stories celebrate the act itself. Other stories turn us on and tell us something else at the same time.
In “The Princess and the Cop,” a woman is forced to confront her class issues. In Eric Jerome Dickey’s “Good-Bye,” the many
layers of infidelity are unraveled.
The contributors included in
Black Silk
take on the bittersweet nature of eros, as in Bernice L. McFadden’s “One-Night Stand” and Bruce Morrow’s “Popsicles, Donuts,
and Reefah.” Other stories invite us to follow their lovers on odysseys. In Janet McDonald’s “Undoings in Amsterdam” and Kiini
Ibura Salaam’s “The Sexiest Seconds,” the journeys take place abroad and lead to self-discovery. For others, the distance
traveled is psychically farther than the character has ever been, as in Elissa G. Perry’s “Revelation.”
Proof that the best sex employs innovation is displayed in stories like Breena Clarke’s exuberant “Fucking the Fat Man” and
in “The Dawn of Our World,” Carolyn Ferrell’s engrossing multigenerational tale of lust and its costs and lessons. Wicked
humor sets the tone in Reginald Harris’s “Stores,” which makes us look at grocery shopping in a whole new way.
Everything from the extraordinary to the mundane is woven amid these lusty tales. In many stories music makes a cameo or plays
an important role: in Clarke’s story, Margaret Johnson-Hodge’s “Summer in the City,” and Cheo Tyehimba’s “A Different Drummer.”
As for food, it becomes the language of love. As Jacqueline Woodson points out in “Kiwi,” her tale of a singer who falls for
another woman’s hands, “If it wasn’t for food, Negroes wouldn’t have no idea how to talk about themselves.” I hope
Black Silk
will provide readers with erotic enjoyment and carnal food for thought. After all, life begins with the erotic touch, and
we are sustained by it.
Retha Powers
New York, 2001
_________________
by Bil Wright
Leave Him and Live. That’s the full name of our group, but none of the members actually uses the whole thing. Most of us shorten
it to
Leave Him
—as in, “Are you going to Leave Him tonight?” or “I’m gettin’ ready to go to Leave Him,” and we all know what we mean. Osceola
Deadrick and Nelda Battey, the founders, started out calling it
L.H.A.F.G.
for
Leave Him and Find God,
but as the group grew, several of us disagreed mightily on who or what God was or wasn’t. Like when the nineteen-year-old
who’d just graduated from Yale announced at her first meeting, “God came to me in my dorm room and She’s a patchwork-colored
woman with breasts and testicles,” Osceola was so upset she threatened to resign as secretary rather than record what the
girl said in the minutes.
So after a while it was decided that the one thing we could all agree on was that no man was gonna leave us wondering whether
we’d survive past the sound of his footsteps fading. Actually, in my case, there wasn’t any divorce that left me sighing,
wringing my hands. No two-week wonder-if-he-will, I’ll-be-only-half-the-woman-I-am-if-he-don’t affair leaving me weary and
ten pounds overweight like more than a few of the members.
Turtle Washington didn’t travel fifty miles from my side without calling to say where he was for the fifteen years we were
married till he had a stroke behind the wheel of his UPS truck and drove through the window of a Safeway supermarket. I didn’t
give myself time to wonder whether I’d survive not having my back up against my Turtle at night, his one hand high between
my legs, his rough heel scraping against my leg. “Turtle Washington,” I used to tell him, “if you wanna keep rubbin’ up against
me, you’ll get up and put some lotion on those old tough heels of yours.” He’d chuckle and ease his hand a little higher between
my thighs, but he never lotioned those heels. Not in fifteen years.
By the first anniversary of Turtle’s death, I tried to leave a few of those memories behind. I moved from Harlem to downtown
and a whole other world, where there were fewer colored men to remind me of my Turtle coming around the corner, staring with
his tongue between his teeth like he was seeing me for the first time. Or standing in the middle of the sidewalk pretending
to check the sports scores in the
Daily News,
knowing I was coming down the block, watching what the sun did when it hit his lips. Or admiring how nobody could hide the
muscles in those calves with wool, cotton, or corduroy.
After I moved downtown, the only time I thought I saw him for sure was when a UPS truck would ease up beside me. I’d look
up smiling, knowing I was about to hear him call out, “Old Turtle’s got a delivery, baby. A Rotina Special.” But it never
was my Turtle up there in the driver’s seat, and eventually Nelda Battey suggested if I joined the group, I might stop listening
for him altogether.
I am proud to admit it was me who suggested at a Saturday Night Potluck that we change our name ever so slightly to “Leave
Him and Live,” and do you know we voted unanimous on it? (By the way, I have started suspecting that a few of the girls who
joined recently are in the group ’cause they decided to Leave Her and Live and they don’t wanna tell no one, and that’s fine
with me. But I do hope they come to understand one day that livin’ ain’t about hidin’. From nobody.)
Some of us come to Leave Him with our insides so dislocated from our last ten years, ten months, or ten days with whomever
we been giving that much energy to, that the first meeting is like a baptism—full immersion. I’ve seen women run the room
like they got the Holy Ghost just because they’re so grateful to be in a place where they can wonder out loud how they got
to shore and have women who almost drowned to welcome them to dry land. How many times have I seen Nelda stand in the middle
of the room like the Great Old Ship of Zion and tell a newcomer, “C’mon girl. What you need is a good old-fashioned hold-on-tight-and-cry
hug”?
But the dry-land part—that’s the trickiest. That’s the part that even today when women are the boldest and the most free-mouthed
I’ve ever known ’em to be, some people still believe a woman who’s got any dignity won’t talk about being hungry.
And Hungry was exactly the neighborhood I was ashamed to admit I’d been living in for at least six months. I’d Seasons Greeting’d
myself through Christmas and redecorated my way through New Year’s Eve, but by our February first meeting my L.H.A.L. sisters
were wondering if they should chip in for a two-hour massage at the Smiling Muscle Spa (male masseur requested), which several
members swore had gotten them through a rough patch or two.
I left the meeting armed with a special herb tea Doreen Chrimney said calmed carnal thoughts and an assurance from Egyptia
Nelson that the longer I refrained from having sex, the better it would feel when it finally happened. Neither of these made
me feel any less foolish about having confided to them, “I wish I was talking about a relationship, but I’m not. Sure as I
still got my wedding band on my finger, I still got Turtle in my heart. But lately there’ve been nights when I’ve gone to
bed imagining making love with the driver in an empty crosstown bus, with all the lights on, in the middle of Fifth and Sixth
Avenues. And in the Sony Cinema 2, behind the screen with the man who sold me my popcorn, while the audience on the other
side was watching the movie. You don’t know what I’m going through!” Doreen and Egyptia pulled me into a tight circle of three,
whispered the Serenity Prayer over me before I left, and promised to call regularly for support.
