AfroerotiK

Who would have thought that after a year of sitting at home alone, I would be on a date? Not only a date, but a date with a great guy. I’d been standing in the grocery store, minding my business, when the gentleman in front of me turned around and said, “Can you watch my daughter for two seconds, I just need to run and get some Pampers, right there.” He pointed to the aisle directly behind us and then his toddler. She was wearing the cutest little t-shirt with Kente embroidery on it and the brightest smile you’d ever want to see.

“Sure, go ahead.” No sooner than her father walked away, the little girl stood up in the cart and made a lunge for the candy, trying to leap like she was the star acrobat in the UniverSoul Circus. I grabbed her just in time before she took a big spill on the floor. “Slow down there little lady.” Rather than her being scared by a stranger, she fit in my arms perfectly and started playing with my earrings and talking to me quite fluently in little girl baby talk.

By the time her father came back, he was apologizing. “I’m so sorry. Let me guess, she made a dive for the candy. I don’t let her have sugar and her mother does so we go through a period of withdrawal every time it’s my time for custody.” She was smiling at me with this little innocent, angelic, brown face and all I could do was come to her defense.

“Nooooo, she … it wasn’t like that. She was just , , , “ I wasn’t very good at lying and I just stopped in mid sentence. “What’s your name, Princess?”

She told me her name quite promptly. I didn’t understand what the heck she said but at that point, she was focused on my necklace and jabbering away about something I’m sure only another two year old or a parent could understand. “Her name is Shakhari, and she is indeed my little princess. I’ll take her back now, thanks.” Shakhari was having none of that and she grabbed my neck and laid her sweet little head on my shoulder. “I share joint custody with her mother and when she lives with me, my brother, and his two sons; she’s the only woman in the house. She has a need for female bonding that defies logical thinking. That estrogen is some powerful stuff, right?”

“It’s okay, I’ll hold her, go ahead, it looks like you could use an extra hand.” While Daddy was unpacking the cart, getting his super savings card swiped, and paying, I was checking him out; he was actually very cute. He had a full beard and a delicious looking chocolate complexion and a shopping cart full of health food. I whispered in Shakhari’s ear, “You know, your Daddy is pretty handsome.”

That must have been the magic phrase because almost immediately Shakhari wanted to go back to Daddy and she reached out to him. He scooped her up and kept loading his cart with the bags like he was the featured juggler with UniverSoul. Right before they were ready to leave, he said, “Say goodbye to the pretty lady, Shakhari.” She blew me a big kiss and I could hear her saying bye-bye over and over until they were well beyond the automatic doors.

I paid for my groceries and made my way to the parking lot. I was putting my groceries in the back seat and still thinking about Dad and that sexy smile when I heard someone say, “Excuse me.” I looked up and it was him. “I didn’t get your name. I’m Vernon; I wanted to thank you for taking care of my little lady. I was wondering if … Do you think it would be okay if I gave you my number and you could give me a call … that is if you aren’t married or seeing someone or anything. Sorry, I’m not very good at this. I haven’t dated in a long while so I’m a little out of practice. I’m sorry.”

I extended my hand, “I’m Deborah, nice to meet you. There’s no need to apologize.” He handed me his business card with his home and cell phone numbers written on the back. A week later I was on a date with him, sitting at a table staring into the dreamiest eyes possible and pinching myself that he was so amazing.

The chemistry was just there, it wasn’t forced or anything, we just seemed to connect. He told me that he’d moved to the area two years ago, a little before Shakhari was born, and his pregnant girlfriend at the time had no intention of moving away from her family, and they had no plans to get married. “I got a chance to really make a difference,” he explained, “so when my brother told me they were opening an Office of Minority Affairs in the county, and were looking for someone to head it up, and he could get me an interview, I jumped at the chance. Janet is a massage therapist on a cruise ship for 3 or 4 months at a time so it works our perfectly that I can take Shakhari, my brother and his two teenage sons are the perfect babysitters whenever I need them. When she is with her Mom, I feel like my entire life is on hold.” He explained to me that he’d largely gotten caught up in his ex’s looks and while he could have made better choices in a partner, and used a lot more precaution, i.e. protection, he was making the best of the situation and being the best father he knew how to be.

The more we talked, the more attracted I was. Sure, we’d talked on the phone, gotten to know each other a little bit before the date, but there was something about being in his presence, smelling his cologne, seeing those shoulders, just being in the company of a man that was intoxicating. I told him my sad story, of how I’d let myself love a man who didn’t love me and how it had fucked with my self esteem so I’d been alone for a while, just trying to work on myself. Isolated was a better term for it. I’d sort of shut myself off from the rest of the world to figure things out and make sense of it all. Usually, when you admit flaws to a man, they run 100 yards in the opposite direction but Vernon was hanging right in there with me, it didn’t seem to disturb him in the least. I could tell from his actions and his words that he was really interested in finding a woman of substance, which is rare. Most men are looking for a woman of beauty, who won’t question them or demand anything of them. He explained that after Shakhari was born, he was intent on finding a great role model for his daughter and a great partner with whom he could build a life together. Boy was I glad the recipe I was using called for shallots that night and I had to run to the store.

After dinner, we walked hand in hand by the bay, looking out over the water and up at the stars. We sat on a bench for a while and watched the other couples walk by, kissing and hugging, feeling each other up as if no one could see what they were doing. I got a little chilly and he gave me his jacket and put his arms around my shoulders. It was getting late but I was in no rush to end the date so I asked him if he wanted to come back to my place for a drink.

I had no plans on having sex with him; I just wanted to appreciate his company a little more. Vernon was picking out music in the living room while I was in the kitchen getting out the glasses and opening the wine. All of a sudden it hit me that I had made a huge mistake. Wine, music, alone in my apartment. Duh, that meant SEX! Hot, buck naked, sweaty sex. My hands started shaking and I couldn’t even hold the bottle opener steady. I was trying to figure out a way to put a stop to the whole thing, call it off, ask him to leave, when Vernon came in the kitchen and said, “Deborah, is everything alright? Here, let me help you with that.”

He intentionally stood behind me, pressing his body against mine, and wrapped his arms around me, placing his hands on top of mine, and opened the bottle. My heart was racing out of my chest. I could feel the fullness of my ass against him, his chest against my back, his arms were strong but his hands were gentle. I closed my eyes and laid my head back against his chest for a moment and just stood there. He started massaging my shoulders, and he said, “This is nice, thank you for inviting me over.” I could feel the warmth of his breath on my ear and in that moment, I felt like a woman. I am a woman of course, but when you spend so much time alone you don’t get a chance to FEEL like a woman. I leaned back into him fully, subconsciously rubbing my ass on him, and I could detect the slightest movement in his pants.

That’s when panic hit me. What the hell was I doing? I wiggled out from between the counter and his body and decided that I was going to gain full control of the situation. I was going to fake a headache and call it a night but Vernon beat me to it. “Whoa, look at the time,” he said! “My nephew has rugby playoffs tomorrow and I have to get home to uhmmm … take care of things, to get ready. I mean I need to get up early to get the kids ready and … well, I better get going.” He was trying to discretely reposition hi erection and scramble for his jacket to put in front of him.

I walked him to the door and we said our goodbyes. I guess neither one of us knew what was the appropriate thing to do. The date was awesome, there was chemistry out of this world, but we were both out of practice in the romance department. We stood at my doorway and saying what a great time we both had and how we should do it again soon. I knew good and damn well that I wanted a kiss. I could tell he wanted a kiss too. He stood there stalling for another minute until finally I just put my arms around his neck, leaned in close and closed my eyes.

The next thing I felt were his lips pressed softly against mine, his tongue softly exploring my mouth. He pulled my body tightly to his and I cupped his face in my hands. His hands explored my back and the further down they went, the more I moaned into his mouth. We went from 0 to 60 in five seconds flat. One kiss turned into deep soul kissing and there was no turning back. He sucked my tongue gently in his mouth and I got dizzy. His mouth tasted slightly sweet, like he’d eaten a mint in anticipation of kissing me while I wasn’t looking. Our lips parted and he started kissing my neck. His technique was out of this world, gently sucking my hot spot and nibbling on my flesh while his hands were pulling me closer, rubbing me all over. There was no way I was going to let him leave so I grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the living room. We both fell on the sofa and started making out like two teenagers in high school.

There is something transcendent about being in the arms of a Black man. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure can testify to that. Being in the arms of a beautiful Black man, after months of being alone, is like finding an oasis in the desert after crawling on the hot sands. When I’m in that moment, feeling his muscles, the power of his grasp, if feels like it’s the reason I was created, it’s like climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and reaching the Apex. Pressing his full body weight into mine, he took my breath away. I tried to pull him closer, to become one with him, to somehow feel his breath inside of me. He put his leg between mine and I started humping on him. My skirt was sliding up and I kept trying to subconsciously pull it back down. My mind was so used to putting me off when they made advances; it was hard to turn off that record that allowed me to be fully sensual and expressive with a man.

Truth is, I was scared. I was scared of letting down my guard. I was unsure of how to be sexual with a man anymore. I wasn’t sure what healthy boundaries were. I was playing all sorts of old tapes in my head about being a slut for sleeping with a man on the first date. I’m 30 years old and I was feeling like a teenager on the couch with my mom upstairs, ready to scold me for being fast.

Vernon must have been having the same apprehensions, well, at least comparable ones. He sat up and moved to the far end of the sofa. I was still lying there, with my legs spread, breathing heavy, and a look of tortured lust on my face. I could clearly see the outline of his dick tenting his pants and he made no efforts to hide it.

“Is everything okay,” I asked, sitting up and trying to gain some composure.

“Sure, I’m cool. It’s just that I’m not really sure that we should be doing this. I can’t lie; I want to be with you. You CAN’T imagine how much I want to be with you right now. It’s just that I don’t want my judgment clouded because it’s been so long since I … you know. I’m into you for a lot of reasons but I don’t want to just get caught up in the moment because I’m trying to fill the void, feel me? I’m not sure if I’m thinking with the right head.”

I think we both needed that minute to catch our breath and regroup. To be honest, the fact that he wanted to slow things down made me want him that much more. Not completely because you always want what you think you can’t have, but I’m sure that had a little to do with it, but mostly because he was actually thinking about the consequences of us getting too carried away. That was a first. Every other man I’d been with, once we’d gotten to the dry humping, spit swapping, simulating sex stage, there was nothing short of a natural disaster that could get them to think about anything other than fucking.

He pulled my skirt hem down to my knees, rather reluctantly I could tell, and then he pulled me onto his lap. We talked for a few minutes but neither of us made a move to end the evening. I tried to move to sit next to him, expressing that I was fearful that I was hurting him, and he sucked his teeth and gave me a look like, “Gurl, pleeease, don’t even think that you could hurt me.” I TOTALLY felt like a woman in the moment.

It was only then that all the work I’d done on myself, redefining and healing, kicked in. I was a vibrant, vital, woman with a lot to offer and sexual needs, the need for human contact. I was deserving of pleasure and sensual release. Yes, I wanted a relationship but more than that I wanted a man to appreciate me for more than being just a piece of ass. I was reasonably confident that Vernon didn’t just want a one night stand. But the real kicker was in coming to terms with the fact that, even if he did, even if having a sex on the first date wasn’t what I’d been conditioned to think a virtuous woman did, I was empowered and responsible for my happiness. I could choose to see the situation as one of opportunity and take ownership of my emotions afterwards, whatever the outcome.

I straddled Vernon’s lap and faced him. I undid the buttons on my blouse, verrrry slowly. He didn’t say a word; he just sat there and watched me. I pulled my blouse off and dropped it to the floor. I took his hands and placed them on my breasts and he started massaging them. I undid the snaps of my bra and let if find a home on the floor on top of my shirt. Instinctively, his mouth found my nipples and started sucking them. I held them up for him, feeding him, throwing my head back and enjoying the sensation of his tongue, moving from one titty to the other, licking my hardened nipples, sucking them, biting them gently, driving me absolutely fucking crazy.

I started grinding on him, undoing the buttons on his shirt. He said, “Wait, shouldn’t we …” I didn’t let him finish his sentence. I kissed him again, this time even more passionately than before, if that was at all possible, and silenced him.

“Vernon, do you want to …” I didn’t know what words to use, have sex, make love, so I just said what I was really feeling in that moment. “Vernon, do you want to fuck me?”

Without missing a beat, he said, “Deborah, I want to fuck you so bad I can’t see straight.” He buried his face between the soft flesh of my breasts and pushed both nipples together and sucked them at the same time.

I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him toward my bedroom so we could stretch out and be more comfortable. He kept asking me if I was sure about this. I turned on my mackadocious music, the music I played when I wanted to get in the mood to fuck myself, and I started dancing for him, taking off the rest of my clothes. I slid out of my skirt and he just sat on the edge of the bed, looking uncomfortable. Leaving my red lace panties on, I knelt between his legs and undid his belt buckle. He was looking down at me like he was having an out of body experience. I undid the button and lowered the zipper on his pants. I reached in his boxers and felt the heat of his dick. I pulled it from the opening and looked up at him, licked my lips, and licked the head. I saw his eyes roll back in his head and I knew that was my go ahead. I swirled my tongue around the head and started licking his shaft. I slipped my lips sensually up and down the length and took his entire dick in my mouth deeply. He was bucking his hips and I was matching his thrusts. He grabbed my by my shoulders and pushed me away. “Stop,” he said breathing heavily, “I need you to slow down.”

I stood up and turned around. I slid my panties down over my full hips and stepped out of them. By the time I had turned back around, Vernon was naked and laying on the bed looking like a chocolate vision of beauty. “My turn,” he said, “and he stuck out his tongue. “I want to taste you.” I climbed on the bed and tried to lie next to him. He wasn’t having that and he told me that he wanted me to ride his face. For a woman who was out of practice at having sex, I wasn’t sure I was comfortable being that assertive. I stopped myself before I got too caught up in old tapes in my head and accepted his invitation.

I grabbed the headboard and threw my leg across his shoulder. He stuck his tongue out and said, “Come on, baby, let me lick that sweet pussy.” I lowered myself slowly, letting the lips of my pussy gently caress his lips. He started kissing my pussy, frenching them like he’d done to me earlier. I was biting my lip, trying to stifle my moans of appreciation but there was no use. I felt fucking fantastic. I started rubbing my pussy on his soft lips, sliding back and forth, feeling his tongue in my hole and his lips sucking at my clit. The sensations were out of the world. Before long, I was bouncing a little harder on his mouth, riding his tongue. Grabbing my ass, he pulled me forward and started licking me from my clit to my asshole. I’ll be a black son of a bitch if I could hold back my sounds of appreciation at that point. I was moaning and talking dirty, telling him how much I loved it.

“Ohhhh, yessss, sexy mother fucker. Let me ride that tongue, shove it in me. Oh shit, that feels so good.” He grabbed thighs and pulled me tighter. Poor little thing, I could have suffocated him I was bouncing up and down on his face so hard. I could feel the tremors, they were building and there was no turning back.

I rolled over on the bed, exhausted, but energized at the same time. Vernon rolled over on me and kissed me and I could taste my juices on his tongue. “Do you need some time to recuperate,” he whispered?

I reached between his legs and felt for his dick and rubbed it on the slit of my pussy. “Fuck me, NOW,” was all I needed to say.

“Oh shit,” he said, “Hold on there sweetness.” He reached for his pants on the side of the bed and pulled out some condoms, opened the package with his teeth, and slid it on his dick. I was so happy he’d taken the initiative to be responsible because I would have kicked myself a thousand times in the morning for not insisting that we use protection.

Locked and fully loaded, he placed my legs on his shoulders. He looked down at me and rubbed the head of his dick on my slit. I was sweating, trying to get him to penetrate me. I was still soaking wet from cumming before but I hadn’t felt a real dick in my in so long, I couldn’t wait any longer. Vernon made me wait. He teased me, excruciatingly painful teasing. He pushed the head in and I gripped the sheets. I was tighter than usual I guess, from not having sex in so long, so he had to work hard to get it all in. We were both sweating and grunting and he was going deeper and deeper. Finally, I could feel his balls on my ass and the head of his dick was deep inside me.

Gripping my thighs, he started fucking me. When I say he was fucking me, he would withdraw all the way to the head and then push every millimeter inside me, rhythmically, methodically, sensually. I was twisting and turning, playing with his nipples, playing with my own, rubbing my clit, just adding to the sensations. I grabbed his ass and started trying to get him to fuck me harder. We were grunting and groaning, he was fucking me senseless. He let my legs go and I wrapped them around his back. He fell on top of me and we began kissing passionately. Our sweaty bodies were slipping and sliding together.

“Oh shit, I’m going to cum.”

He fell on the bed, staring at the ceiling, not saying a word. I pulled the covers over us and drifted off to sleep snuggled up next to him. I awoke to the sounds of him getting dressed, glanced at the clock, and it said 5:30.

“Listen, Shakhari has never woken up with me not there so I need to run,” he whispered. “I left the address of where my nephew is going to be playing. Meet us there when you get a chance. I can’t wait to see you later.” He kissed my forehead. “Go back to sleep and get some rest and we can pick up where we left off tonight.”

I was relieved. While I was prepared for the big blow off, I was pleased that it looked like things were going to move ahead. Where things were going to go was entirely up to us but I was pretty assured that he hadn’t just taken advantage of me and I was confident that I had truly made the empowered choice that signaled a sensual rite of passage for me as a woman.

(And just so you know, he nephew’s team won the regional title.)

Degrading Women

Everyone watches porn. Porn has become a staple in most people’s daily lives in fact. Not too long ago, porn was only something for “dirty old men” and perverts. In the not too distant past, you had to go to a store to rent a video, buy a magazine and hide it in your closet, or go to a seedy theater with sticky seats to view erotic images. Today, most people, male and female, have porn websites bookmarked on their computers and they check in daily for some sort of stimulation, whether it be pictures, videos, stories, chatting with other people, or a host of other options available. You can have porn downloaded on your phone and be a member of a virtual porn world; you can have access to porn 24 hours a day if you are so inclined. Porn has become so commonplace, so much a part of our daily lives that we don’t even realize how much the constant access to it has changed us and our perceptions about sex and sexuality.

Porn has evolved since its early days. While still very much geared towards and created for men, there are very few women who don’t get aroused by porn today. It wasn’t all that long ago that FREE porn on the internet was a rarity; most porn sites were pay sites and most free sites were just teasers to direct you to a pay site. Today, one needn’t pay anything to access full length videos, webcams, and communities with other people who have the same preferences and fetishes you share. Women are seeking out porn as a viable career, they are producing and directing it, they are complicit in the objectification of the female image.

What hasn’t evolved is our collective sexual maturity. People still aren’t comfortable with their sexuality. Our sexuality is still steeped in shame, lies, and self-deception. Women are still lying about the number of partners and experience they have; men are still in denial about their practices and preferences. We are still ruled by Victorian mores and conservative guidelines that are unnatural. Sex is, or it should be at least, a tool for communication, a meditation, an expression of love. Sex should be about two people coming together and exploring their passion for one another. Sex has become about the power exchange that makes women into nothing more than objects for men’s arousal, frustration, and release.

There can be little question about the fact that the daily consumption of porn desensitizes people. Whereas we once were aroused by just the act of two people having sex, scintillated at what can only be considered tame, now, we need to see people doing more extreme and deviant things in order to maintain our same level of arousal. Whereas we could once could get off on seeing a solitary image, now, we need to see hundreds of images, in search of that illusive image that will get us off; we need to see hours upon hours of porn to get a nut.

Today, without question, porn is largely about degrading women. Exploited, abused, punished, brutal, disgraced, humiliated, tortured, gagged, and forced are very common tags for porn, so much so that we don’t get offended or even blink an eye when we see them. Even rape is eroticized in porn. If a clip isn’t promoted as particularly brutal, it’s nothing to see a woman being slapped, spanked, spit on, gagged, and roughly fucked in almost every scene. Women are routinely subjected to being called a bitch, slut, and a whore during sex, shown doing things that no self-respecting man would ever do if the situation were reversed.

What effect does seeing these types of images do to a sexually immature nation? First and foremost, we accept this sort of treatment as normal, we never question it being sexist or misogynist, and we become aroused by seeing it. Men, who learn everything they know about sex from a computer screen, NEVER see images of seduction, intimacy, tenderness, or love-making. They assume all women want to be treated like a slut, called names, abused, and pounded like a nail during sex. Women want to emulate the images they see, they want to be considered sexy so they adopt the persona of the video slut, begging for more abuse, aroused by being treated like shit, without regard for or even awareness of their own desires. Sex has become about the degradation of women and no one seems to care. Everyone is too concerned about pretending that they don’t watch porn, that they are sexually frigid and intolerant of any sort of sexual expression. We are on a high-speed, runaway train careening towards sexual dysfunction and porn that degrades women is the fuel.

As one of the only unapologetic, card-carrying, dyed-in-the-wool, true feminists left, (and as a woman who consumes a fair share of adult material) I have made some shocking and uncomfortable discoveries about my own tastes and preferences in porn. I have always been a staunch advocate for, and creator of erotica for couples. I write stories that appeal to both men and women; I will not objectify or degrade Black women in any of my work. I have never in my life dominated a woman because I can’t bring myself to oppress, even under the auspices of sexual roleplay, the already oppressed. All of that being said, I too, have become victim to the plague of porn desensitization. I have watched, sought out, and been aroused by images of women being degraded. I am aroused by women (and men as well, but for this conversation we will focus on women) who are proud of their depravity, who revel in it, who are unapologetically ravenous in their need to be degraded.

While I can say that I’ve never been victim of the unknown force that entices women to want to be degraded or humiliated during sex, admittedly, there are times when seeing a woman dominated sexually pushes all my buttons. I have to admit that because most of the images of women doing obscene and perverse things are of white women, my “fetish” if you will is limited to women who look nothing like me. Seeing white women degraded is arousing because I can completely distance myself from the act, I can objectify them as “other” because it becomes arousing to know that they would so readily display themselves doing any manner of unspeakable acts for pleasure. I can get off on white women doing things that relegate them to nothing more than filthy whores who will do anything, no matter how depraved, and enjoying it. Do I think my preferences are healthy? No. Am I okay with them for the time being? Yes. Most people won’t even acknowledge what gets them off in the privacy of their homes in front of their computer screens. The simple fact is that I’m willing to discuss it publicly and that I’m at least aware that my fascination isn’t the most healthy expression of sexuality. I feel comfortable in knowing that I am aware of the issue, addressing, and working on it. That is more than most people can say.

Where does that leave the rest of America, the ones who aren’t as self-aware as I am nor are they cognizant of their own misogynist behaviors? Well, men are now socialized to think that seduction and romance are unnecessary, that women are only deserving of being treated like objects. Women have never been socialized to have a voice to ask for anything other than being spanked and/or abused. Behind closed doors, in the glow of the computer monitor, the degradation of women is being eroticized day in and day out, and it has become the norm. It is my strong belief that the degradation of women is symbolic of the destruction of our society. If women can’t be seen as equals, as objects worthy of adoration and exaltation, the very foundation upon which relationships are formed is shaky.