One Safe Place (6 page)

I write my memoirs in a journal in the form of short stories and poems. I laugh at my closet poet's mind, knowing I'm the person who can't share my off-color thoughts and dreams. Not this public figure! But I write them, wishing one day I can share them and maybe leave them with someone who would want them because they want to know me and not exploit me.

A year passed before I opened a door to Psalms entering a danger zone with me. I was putting two careers in serious peril. When I finally crossed the line, and asked him to cross over with me, it happened while in another country. I'd had enough of being with plastic people that day and needed some realness. I love representing and serving my country to the point I endured rejection by many of my own people for what I represent to them. I endure all of that and not have any love at the end of the day waiting for me? Enough. I made my move.

• • •

Agent Psalms Black made one last inspection of my hotel suite at the end of a conference while we were in Bahrain. He was a man of detail. His eyes move like graph paper lines when he scans.
He removed his sunglasses and his golden eyes…his golden eyes.

Under his eye—his birthmark is noticeable. Although he's not ashamed of it, he felt it drew the wrong attention while doing his job to protect whomever. He said his birthmark was a bull's-eye target to the right killer. That night in my room I spoke to him like no other time. He was my target. I needed for him to live and to give me some life.

“This might seem extraordinarily peculiar to speak to you but, Mr. Black, I seriously need to have some conversation that's not based on ‘How is the weather?' and ‘How was your day?' and to give back more than a nondescript response. I would love to drop all the pretentious verbiage. I would like to have a drink…share a drink with you, and talk with you about anything other than world affairs,” I said to the agent assigned to protect my body.

Without looking at him, I poured a double shot of G'Vine Gin on the rocks. My eyes played shy when any other time, I kept my eyes pinned on Psalms. I was sure of my words, but unsure of what I was doing, yet understanding the risk. I chose to break the ice, supplant protocol, and get to know the man protecting me.

• • •

That was seven years ago when we chanced embarrassment and careers. We became lovers. Awareness of our surroundings was something we both kept conscious of as we became lovers and best friends. I look at Psalms walking through his condo door. The extra-wide designed doors in his condo make the average man look like a minor, but Psalms looks manly, wide, and powerful coming through them. He is wide and powerful both physically and intellectually. Damn, he makes me sear with lust and serious cerebral thoughts.

Psalms stares at me with his golden eyes. It feels like he sees me
without any clothes on with his graph-paper-line scan. I want his naked, firm body to lift me up and lay me down on the hardwood floor and make my naked body squeak with wet, sweating fiction. I want to role play with him and have Psalms drag me as I submit. I want to feel myself sliding and reaching and touching his calves and on up to his muscled thighs and ass. As he is dragging me, I can see his hardness pointing, ragging, dripping, and my body slips and slides. Once we're in his bedroom, I'd crawl on all fours, and I'd grab his hardness, hold it, and suck it as hard as he often sucks my breasts. I imagine he is torturing me with pleasure.

I come back to my current existence, and Psalms is still staring at me and doesn't speak. Psalms offers no greeting or engagement—remnants of my relationship with men assigned to protect me. Speak when spoken to—a power trip request or demand by the lonely or self-absorbed.

I sat down with almost every world leader. I, Gabrielle (Gabby) Papillon Brandywine, an African-American woman born and raised in Galveston, Texas, rose to be distinguished and disliked, but respected for the most part.

There's a price to pay for being a powerful woman before, during, and after serving in office. The media intrusion in to a public figure's life remains and, as for me being a woman, privacy is still an issue. Everything I do and say is a matter of public interest and record. A love life is almost impossible for a woman in high governmental office. A romantic dinner out in public and the media frenzy could easily overshadow a peace treaty signing.

I don't have the option of retiring from office, and becoming an exhibition and behaving like a-booty-shaking-washed-up-ex-baller's-whore-or-wife and I do not want to do either. It is a shame for any woman to become a spectacle on a reality show that too many women look to for training in class.

Powerful men can drop their drawers and get caught with women who make money on their backs. Mostly powerful white men in Congress abuse their power and have mistresses, and abandon their wives, while those wives have been at home and raising the children, or may even be on their deathbeds. These politically corrupt men will dump a devoted wife for a newer piece of ass as fast as a fat conservative radio shock jock needs to swallow a Viagra pill to get it up. Those same nasty-ass men will run for the presidency years later, and the press will only hint about their low-life deeds. A double standard, yes! A woman in high governmental office can expect to be burned at the social stake and seen as a cold-blooded whore if she goes from man to man.

Unlike most men, standards of a professional woman in her public life apply to her private life as well. If I ever step out of bounds, the ramifications can be devastating to a life that is already hard enough. The fact is even when a woman is in bounds, the media still wants to know who is she screwing, and when. If you're not screwing someone, it may be assumed you're a lesbian.

Some of the most talented women who have worked for me live alternative lifestyles. They don't come out because of how they'll be treated, and it is wrong! So, I'm doing what many women have to do, keeping my private life behind a curtain. Whether a single mom or a woman in a public position, we have to keep our private lives hidden all too often. Being entitled to do as you please as a woman, and be respected, is a pipe dream, unfortunately. To conduct yourself as you please, with “it's nobody's business” attitude that is reserved for a reality show ex-housewife or a side piece waiting to become a scandal.

The man moving toward me is smiling; he hardly ever smiles at anyone or anything else. When he smiles at me, he melts me. He
is what I like and love. I feel respected by Psalms as if I'm his woman, but…in public because he used to be my government-issued protector, so we act like associates. Many will assume he was my lover on the taxpayers' dime in furnished offices and hotels abroad. Well, he was my lover, and we did do the do. But, I'm here in his place now, after both of us have left high-profile positions.

I often have to initiate conversations with Psalms, and it is one of the few things I don't care for. But, as long as I'm close to him, I'm happy. “Psalms, you look good down on the beach working out. Are you sore? How about we take a shower, and I'll rub you down?”

He is leaning over into my breathing space. His lips brush against my cheek. His deep timbre hums in my ear like a hummingbird removing nectar. “I thought you were coming to town next weekend.” Before I can respond, he kisses my thick upper lip, and then slips his tongue across my teeth as he removes my empty glass from my hands. It could be the vodka or maybe his kiss, but I'm feeling a bit woozy.

I bite his tongue and hold it for a count, but not hard enough that he can't pull it back. “I was,” I say. He slides his tongue in deep and I bite lightly again. I used to have a rather large gap until I was a teenager. I showed him pictures of me from back then, and ever since Psalms has had a fetish about what used to my gap. Every once in a while, he calls me Gabby if he wants to hush me up because I'm running off at the mouth over an intense subject.

Sometimes he calls me Butterfly, when I make him cum so hard, and he's about to drift off to sleep tucked against my skin. My middle name is Papillon: French for butterfly. His tongue plays nasty in my mouth like when he's going down on me, and it sends showers to my pussy. Then he comes back, licks my lips all around
and I hold still for him to do that. It almost has the same effect on me when he licks on my plump pussy lips. Psalms tells me I'm a hot butterfly.

The media glorifies and ridicules the thickness and visual of my lips. Tabloids have mocked me as being Meagan Good's real mother. We do share the same lip contour and likewise visual lip size, and a slight resemblance facially. The big difference is, she might be a size four and I'm a size—well, it's in the teens and varies from end to end, depending on my stress level. I'm in the tabloids all the time and my build is parodied on late-night TV. I'm built with curves, lots of breast, and a full, well-rounded ass. A few heads of state were careless, and cameras have caught them gawking. I've been glorified for my breasts and ass in a rap song.

One song remarked:

“Her hair is fly girl whip appeal

Her rump is running humpty-dumpty wild and wide

Her breasts could feed the poor

If only her conservative mind was fine like her Hollywood face

The girl looks like a freak

But that can't be when she talks like she better than you and me.”

All I can do is laugh, because little do they know about the real me. I am open-minded. Psalms and I do things others have to go watch pornos to get a clue. Psalms pulls back his tongue, and I act as if I'm going to bite his tongue if he tries to insert again…knowing I won't. I'll just melt as I always do.

“Psalms, I hope it's all right that I'm here. Henry Kissinger had to cancel a dinner lecture at East Seattle City University. The chancellor thought a former Secretary of State would fill the bill. So, I'm here for four days, if that's okay with you. I canceled my own classes.”

“Gabrielle, you know you don't have to ask, even though you
weren't asking. It must be nice to cancel your classes whenever you want to. All that money they charge those kids to get into UC Berkeley and you, Professor Brandywine, pull a disappearing act, like ‘Oh well.' ”

“I have a suite at the Westin if you want to stay there instead.”

“Gabrielle, I spotted your security detail down on the street.” As always, he doesn't respond to statements or questions that don't really need to be answered or responded to.

“I know they're not the best security, but the college provided them. I'm okay, babe, nothing will happen to me.”

“You may not be on the world stage anymore, but people still want to cause you harm. If you are coming here, I want to know so I can put my people on you to protect you, okay?”

I'm a woman who runs shit, and one of the beauties of being with Psalms is I can hand control to him and completely trust him and his love. I can be a black woman first and foremost and drop all the public image of how I'm an American patriot only.

I nod my head and let Psalms know I understand he wants to protect me, and I should have informed him I was coming. He's not trying to keep me away from an unexpected visit. Psalms Black is almost too honest. He will hurt my feelings with his brutal honesty, so he will tell me to go if that's what he wants.

I know about his other woman, the one for love with no sex. I know he has protected her from herself for most of her life. She's no threat to me, but I don't like it. I could do something about it. I do think about doing something. Maybe I should, but I know who I am. I understand my worth in his world. I know no other woman can do for him what I can. If someone were to think less of me for how I feel—oh well. I love that man: he will be all mine one day, and one day soon. But for now, we lead an almost secret life.

I worked my ass off to be the most powerful woman in the world, often thought of as much as the president I served under and by some, liked more. At my service and assistance, I had the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA and Homeland Security for certain situations. I've met and made connections; I've made friends to help me in my endeavors, all for Psalms and I have to have a life together.

Psalms removes his shirt and is headed to his room. I make myself another morning eye-opener and wait until I hear the shower running. I always anticipate him taking me hard and forceful with very little foreplay. The thought alone makes me almost too wet. I love him sliding in his hardness when I haven't kissed it or touched it yet it, and taking it and giving it to me hard.

Some Sunday mornings, I've been on different national TV talk shows:
Face the Nation, Meet the Press, This Week,
and yes, even the Fox Network's
Fox News Sunday.
Most people watch and see me as classy, graceful, educated, and skillful in how I answer questions that could cause political wars, or wars period.

Most never think I have another side that just wants my man to hold and pin me down, and pound his hardness into me as if he is trying to hurt me. I raise my ass to that in a toast. If most knew of the places our tongues go, they would write laws to put me in prison. Bill Clinton slid a cigar into his mistress' ass. Many think a lady should never do certain things, but this lady does it all and can't wait until the next time.

The queen farts with her royal elitist facade, and I love rough, hard-pounding sex, despite what my public wants to think of my persona of gracefulness.

Right now, I'm stripping down and joining my ex-Secret Service agent in the shower to go help him relax, and for me to get off.

T
he stereo was loud, but not enough to keep people from holding conversations. Ledisi caressed her sexy voice in to her version of D'Angelo's “Brown Sugar” through the speakers. Seattle's morning sunshine ended up fighting with the clouds and lost. Grayness now was the color of the day on the Seattle skyline.