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Text Box: when I told her we were through. It saved her the trouble of having to dump me. I wasn’t able to pretend it was just an affair, because for me she was the woman I had been waiting for, but she literally belonged to and was in love with another man. An entire year went by before I would hear from her again. My phone rang late one night and it was her and her drama just like old times. They are a package deal. She had found Patrick in bed with her cousin and that was the last straw to convince her after all these years that he wasn’t capable of anything else but being a sugar daddy. She left him shortly after we stopped seeing each other, and met a Jamaican man who treated her like a princess and of course he was wealthy. She didn’t love him, but she could possibly fall in love with him, according to her. She was eight months pregnant and due any week now. The news hit me hard, but I was happy for her that she was able to shed Patrick and find someone who could keep her in the latest fashions. In her voice I could still hear that something was somehow amiss. Her heart was pretending to be happy, but she was only going through the motions. Silence filled the air and in the background I could hear music playing, a sad melancholy song about unrequited love by Luther Vandross was playing. “I still love him,” she said. Her voice was barely audible as if she was afraid to give voice to those feelings she couldn’t get rid of as much as she tried to forget him. Her declaration didn’t surprise me, but there’s nothing anyone can do for someone who feels love so deeply that even when abused and made to feel less of a woman, love still lives in their heart for that person. We both stayed silent and listened as Luther explained to us how love was So Amazing. Maybe one day we would both be filled with this amazing love Luther sings so passionately about. Dean A. Jean-Pierre 9-20-05 5:56pm
Text Box: The story I’m about to tell you may sound crazy, and often times inconceivable, but it speaks to the power of love when it takes control of our heart, mind and common sense. Love has this way of taking you by the feet and letting you fly until heaven is in sight, and just when you think you can fly with the gods, it snatches you back to earth depositing you into the depths of hell. Between heaven and hell is where love lives in limbo when it has no place to call home as it waits for its inevitable death. For the past ten years Melissa had been dating Patrick, a man by who all accounts was a manipulator of hearts and minds. He was forty, twenty years her senior and had made the naïve and beautiful Melissa his mistress. He promised her the world, and would give her everything her little materialistic heart desired. To a man like Patrick, money didn’t mean anything, and he would use it to buy people like they were goods in a store. Everything was for sale in his mind if you had enough money to get it. He had bought Melissa and for his money he felt as if he could do anything to her that wanted, after all, property is something you own and do with as you please. During the next ten years, he cheated on her so many times that he lost count of how many women came in and out of his bed. He would often times call them by the wrong names, but they all didn’t care because he had managed to buy them off also with promises of trips, money and whatever other bribes he could imagine to soothe their little materialistic hearts. Being Patrick’s mistress, Melissa knew she would always be second to his wife and kids, and she played the part well. All of Patrick’s friends, associates and even family knew about her. Their affair was the worst kept secret in the Bronx. Patrick’s wife, Monique also knew about Melissa, but couldn’t care less what he did behind her back. She was the one driving the BMW, had the million-dollar home and access to his bank account. In her eyes, Melissa was saving her from hours of sex she no longer enjoyed. When Patrick sauntered in at 3am in the morning after sleeping with Melissa, he would slide into bed next to Monique without a word. There was a silent understanding between them that he could do his dirt as long as he came home every night, and was there to see the kids off in the morning. In ten years, Patrick had kept to this schedule, so everyone was happy except for Melissa. She was getting screwed in more ways than one. Text Box: Melissa had all the latest clothes, shoes, an apartment, a brand new Jeep Cherokee, and was the envy of all her girlfriends. She didn’t have to work for any of these things that were given to her. All she had to do was give up her self-respect and the belief that she could get better than what was being given to her. Always the manipulator, Patrick fed her head with the notion that he would always take care of her, so there really was no need to aspire to higher education when he was there to take care of all her needs. He even helped her parents finish paying off their mortgage. Everyone loved Patrick’s money and fell prey to it. Melissa’s parents knew that their daughter was a mistress to a married man, but never once did they tell her it was wrong. Never once did they say we didn’t raise you to be a whore to a man who would sleep with you and then go home to his wife every night. Maybe someone should have taken the initiative years ago and told her that what she was doing could only end up badly for her, and she was much too young to settle for this sort of empty life. Hardly ever does a man come out on the short end of these extra-martial situations, because there will always a younger woman who’s willing to accommodate his needs for the right price. As long as there’s Gucci, Prada and Coach there will always be women who can’t afford them, and men who want to buy for them at a price. Time is never a friend to a woman who waits for years for a man to come to his senses, and realize she’s the one he should have been with all along. There’s nothing noble about being a bridesmaid. For all the numerous affairs Patrick engaged in never once did Melissa with full knowledge of all his infidelities cheat on him. She had this warped sense of loyalty to him which was inconceivable to everyone who knew her. Anytime the thought of cheating would enter her mind, she would always feel guilty and dirty for feeling this way; but being his mistress was second nature to her and she accepted her role and never aspired to be the wife. That’s when I came along and challenged everything she had allowed to have happen in her life. She had basically given up control of her life to a man who lied with the same ease he took a breath. To be just friends with a beautiful woman like Melissa was next to impossible and unnatural. She was an Amazon beauty baked to perfection by long hot summer days. Text Box: Her bronzed color was so deep that not even the coldest of New York winters could pale it away. She had a body that was made for sex, and anything less would just be wrong. We shared an immediate chemistry that even if you were blind you could feel our electricity crackling in the air. Patrick immediately tried to dissuade her from having a friendship with me by citing the rules that he lived by that all men just wanted sex and especially from her. His whole argument was quite funny when you think about it. A married man trying to convince his mistress that cheating would be wrong. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Melissa decided that for the first time in ten years she would allow herself to taste life outside Patrick, and within weeks we were involved in a whirlwind romance. Needless to say, women like Melissa cross your path once in a lifetime, and you know what the end result will ultimately be, but the lure of passion far outweighs any future heartache you will suffer at her hands. She would come to my bed after he went home to his wife, and she would stay with me until the rising of the sun. Many nights we would talk until the sun rose from night’s arms, and then we would lose our minds in the heat of our passion. It’s true what they say about St. Lucian women: that there’s something extra in the air they were born into because Melissa possessed a passion that was close to animalistic. She would urge me to rough her up, abuse her verbally and physically by slapping her around during sex and calling her the most degrading of names you can call a woman. At first, I resisted but her incessant pleading made me give in to her will. Every time we made love she wanted to go a little further with the abuse, and one night I heard her crying in the bedroom. She claimed it was nothing, but I knew that behind her insistence of bedroom violence lived a lot of self-loathing. We can all put up a brave face to our friends, but when you go to bed at night there’s no one to put on a show for anymore. It’s just you and your conscience and the lies and false bravados of not caring that the person you love doesn’t hold you in high regard can be a hard pill to swallow. Finally one day I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t be a party to the abuse she craved so much as a way of easing her pain. I had fallen desperately in love with her, but I knew she didn’t feel the same way, and even though she would never admit it I couldn’t support her in the lifestyle she craved, so I took my love and left before she could dump me. There was relief in her eyes