It’s amazing how when we are young and haven’t experienced life yet, songs are listened to for the beat and the rhythm. It’s only later, when we are older and wiser, that we listen to and relate to the lyrics behind the songs. We can relate because we have been there and done that.
Reflecting back on the last few turbulent months of my life, I realize I have changed. Really, I had no choice but to change from a naive young woman who thought she knew it all into a mature, wiser woman.You see, I have learned that life has a way of teaching us hard lessons about love. And believe me, there are many lessons to be taught, lessons learned only by living them. You have to go through them and survive to truly understand.
Sometimes, the only way is to live life, learn from our mistakes and move on. Unfortunately, when it comes to love, for a lot of us, it takes a while longer to get to that moving on stage. A lot of us have to be taught the lesson over and over again before we finally get it. Women, throughout history, have played the fool for love. And you know what? We probably always will. It has been drilled into us from birth that to be truly happy we need a man in our life and in our bed. I’m sure I can get some amens to that.
The lessons I have learned are quite simple.
Lesson number one:The entire concept of love is a bunch of pure, one hundred percent, unadulterated bullshit.
Love doesn’t conquer all or solve all our problems; if anything, love probably complicates matters. Once love comes into the picture, it totally changes things. You definitely can’t live off of it when your symbol of love is beating you down.
Lesson number two: Never, never, never, I repeat, never, let a man, no matter how much you love him or he claims to love you, control your life or become your life. Before you know it, you have lost your identity and ultimately yourself.
I swear on my daddy’s grave that will never, ever, happen to me—AGAIN.
If I ever have children, especially a daughter, I’m going to teach her that fairy tales are just that—fairy tales. There isn’t a black knight in shining armor who’s going to ride into your life and love you, protect you and cherish you forever. That shit only happens in the movies. In real life, love usually comes with a price.
1
Christian
T
hey say there comes a time in every man’s life when he has to stand up and be a man. He has to make a decision that is going to affect the rest of his life. Yet there is no turning back. Well, that time has come for me. My life is now divided into “before the incident” and “after the incident.”
Love can make us do some crazy shit. That little four-letter word was never in my vocabulary until recently. Hell, I am, or should I say was, one of the biggest players out there. Don’t take that the wrong way. I am honest about who and what I am . . . no games, just straight-up, up-front honesty. That’s what the women of the nineties want . . . right?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m just not about to settle down and do the “family thing”; that is all so boring and predictable. I honestly believe that I wasn’t born to be monogamous; it’s not in my genes. Therefore, I’m not going to live my life based on a lie.
Like I said before, I’m straight up. I’m not about playing these bullshit games. I’m too old for that shit. I let them know right up front . . . I am
not
about commitment, falling in love, marriage, children, or the white picket fence. I’m enjoying my life to the fullest and their company at that particular moment in time. If they have any other ideas then they had better step.
But when love calls your name, you can’t run away no matter how hard you try or how bad you want to. I should know because I know I tried. In fact, I thought I was running a marathon. But I fell in love with a lady who has the face of an angel and a heart of gold. Mia . . . that’s her name. Mia. I think I loved her the first time I laid eyes on her. She literally touched my heart, and I have never been the same since. No one else could ever make me feel this way.
I was in denial for a long time, trying to run from the truth, but the truth has a funny way of finding your ass. Mia is damn near perfect and I would willingly give up my life for her. That’s some heavy shit coming from me, but I would with no hesitation. There is one small problem. Actually, it is quite a major problem. Mia doesn’t love me. She has eyes only for my best friend, Brice—her husband.
Yeah, there comes a time when you have to do the right thing. Sometimes the right thing involves hurting people you don’t want to hurt. But, hey, life is full of disappointment, betrayal and pain. I should know.
2
Mia
M
rs. Brice Matthew. Mrs. Mia Matthew. Mia Matthew. Life is good. I still can’t believe I actually met, fell in love with and married my black knight in shining armor. Fairy tales do come true; I’m witness to that. Mama and Uncle Larry are always saying that I am a hopeless romantic.Yes, I cry watching sappy love stories, and yes, I want that kind of love. A love where when I see
him,
my legs tremble, my heart rate speeds up, and when I look into his eyes, I know my meaning for living. Now, that’s love. I truly believe, though, that there is one special person out there for each and every one of us: a soul mate. Once you meet that person, your life is complete.
Brice . . . I love that man so much. I love everything about him, from his sexy, penetrating brown eyes, his sensuous lips that kiss my neck, my breasts and every place imaginable, to his strong hands with his long, trim fingers that know just where to stroke. . . .The list goes on and on.
Brice is everything I have ever wanted in a man and more. I have to pinch myself every night before I go to sleep and every morning when I wake up to make sure I’m not dreaming. I know, I know, he has me whipped. And you’d best believe I love every minute of it and every inch of him.
Don’t get me wrong, now. Brice is not perfect. Oh, man, Brice is by no means perfect. He has a fiery temper that he can’t control, he has a possessive nature, and he loves me too much. Yeah, too much. Sometimes it’s suffocating. I’ll get into that later. For now, I am going to continue lying here basking in the afterglow of good—no great—lovemaking while I watch my husband sleep like a newborn baby.
3
Brice
M
ia is the love of my life. I have always dreamed of marrying a woman like her. She is beautiful, intelligent, sexy and everything a man could want in a woman. I wanted to have the type of marriage that my parents had when I was growing up. After thirty-plus years of marriage, they are still kicking it and still very much in love.
Mia is younger than me, eight years to be exact. She’s only twenty-two years old. That concerned me in the beginning because I felt that she needed to do some more growing up, which she does, but then I realized that she was still at an age where she could be molded. I know that sounds old-fashioned and makes me sound like a male chauvinist or something, but I am none of the above. Mia has her own mind and can do whatever she wants to do—to an “extent.” She is still learning what that “extent” is. My daddy didn’t take any mess from his wife, my moms, and I don’t intend to either. Mia thinks I am too possessive of her. I tell her that I am just being a man, and I intend to wear the pants in my family. She can learn that the easy way or the hard way.
Before I met Mia, my boy Christian and me were out there. And I do mean out there. We were never at a loss for women and pussy. There is something about a man in uniform that turns a lot of women on. Women love Marines. And I love women. If Mia ever knew some of the shit that we did, she probably would never have married me. I can’t even believe some of the things that we did to get some. But those days are gone for me. I am totally committed to Mia.
When I want some, all I have to do is roll over and spread her legs wide and she is always willing and ready. All my years of experience have paid off, because I can do some shit to Mia that drives her out of her mind. She’ll be screaming, arching that tiny back with her perky breasts begging to be stroked, calling out my name and coming in her panties before I can even get it in good. Then she’ll have those long, slim legs wrapped around my waist so that she can take all of me inside of her.Yeah, Mia is definitely dick whipped; she totally gives her body to me with no inhibitions.
4
Christian
T
he day and circumstances under which I met Mia are permanently etched in my mind. It was a day that would change everything that I believed in, and for that matter, everything I didn’t believe in. I received a phone call from my boy Brice, who had recently returned from a thirty-day leave, and he asked me to come over for one of his infamous cookouts. Brice is my best friend; we have been best friends since we were around six or seven years old.
Actually, he is more like a brother than a friend. I have his back and he always has mine. We have been through a lot of heavy shit together, but through thick and thin he has been there for me. In high school, we were dubbed the “Two Musketeers”; when you saw me you saw him. We rarely let anyone into our little circle. When my mother died in a car accident during my sophomore year of high school, it was Brice who asked his parents to take me in.
My father, well, I have never known my father. I think during my entire lifetime I have seen him three, maybe four times. I could walk down the street and look him straight in the face and not even know that I was looking at my dad. That’s really sad because, personally, I think that if you can pull out your dick and fuck, then you should be man enough to take care of any babies you make. A boy needs his father to show him how to be a man. But since my dad wasn’t much of a man, I guess I didn’t miss anything. Anyway, that’s water under the bridge. I’m thirty years old.
On the other hand, my mother, Emily, was everything to me. Even though we didn’t have much, we had each other. My older brother, Randy, had been killed by a stray bullet years earlier. My moms worked hard, and I didn’t have the newest or most fashionable clothes, but I always had a hot meal on the table and clean clothes on my back. Moms refused to let me quit school and find a job to help out around the house. House, well, we didn’t have a house, but it was a home.You see, I am a product of the projects, and everything you have heard and seen is true. In reality, it is probably worse. Living there makes you grow up fast and without any disillusions about life. Moms made a home for me out of that four-room apartment, though.
I sometimes wonder how Brice and I even became friends. Brice was the total opposite of me. He grew up with both parents. His mother, Vivica, is a retired schoolteacher, and his father, Richard, is a retired carpenter. I loved to visit him and spend the night at his house even though it showed me just how little Moms and I actually had. Brice was and is all the things that I wanted to be. He was popular, athletic, handsome and charming. The women loved, and still do love, Brice. Of course, me being his best friend made me popular also.
After Moms passed, I thought I was going to lose my fucking mind. How could this happen to me? First Randy, then Moms, and my father might as well have been dead. My grades started to drop, I lost weight and didn’t care about myself or anyone else for that matter. I think that was when I decided to never love anyone again, because love can vanish so quickly and the hurt and pain lasts forever. I shielded myself to never feel that way again. Today, if a woman gets too close . . . I’m history. I’m gone!
Brice helped me out of my depression as only Brice could. When I moved in with him and his family, we ended up sharing his room. It was a bedroom that could have been considered large for one person, but with my arrival and clutter it seemed like there was never enough room. Yet Brice never complained even once to me.
I was lying on my back staring into space with the lights off, which is something I was doing quite often, when Brice entered our room.
“Man, get off your lazy ass and stop feeling sorry for yourself.” I continued to lie there as if I hadn’t heard him. That was easy for him to say, he still had his mother and father.
He said disgustedly, “Christian, just look at yourself! Would your Moms want you to exist like this? No, I don’t think so.”
Brice noticed that he had gotten my attention with the mention of my moms. So he continued. “Man, your Moms is gone physically, but you still have her here in your heart and in your memories.You will never lose that. No one can ever take that away from you.”
I was still lying there like a zombie, but I was seeing a new side to my friend.This was a man who could get a freshman girl at school who was half out of her mind over him to give him a blow job in the bathroom at a Friday-night party and act like he had never seen her before on Monday morning at school. This was the same man who would bet me twenty dollars that he would fuck this girl or that girl at the basketball game in the backseat of his car and then tell me all the intimate details of how tight she was, how she was moaning and begging for more or how he made her suck him off.
“Life is for the living, and you have plenty of people who love, support and care about you. Christian, get over it! Emily would want you to have a life. Make her proud.”