Tag archieven: dark men

I am that

Yellow street lights reflected on the silent cars. Our voices echoed off of the old stones of the deserted alley. Something was odd, and I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
“Can you believe Google maps insisted this was the best place to park?” Samuel asked as he scanned the narrow street for his car. “Look, mine’s there. It has Sahara sand on it, from the rain this afternoon. ”
I stepped into the low sports car and abandoned my riddle. Who cared what was odd, or why. I was with a big black man, and I was determined to soak up and enjoy every minute God granted me.

The big black man. I wasn’t aware I had that fantasy. I knew I liked colored skin, mixed race. Whenever I had a lover he was usually brown, young, with his height, income and strength matching mine, and most likely his testosterone level too. We were equals. And it took Samuel before I realized that I didn’t want an equal. I, Lauren, wanted to be overruled, dominated. Desired, tasted, consumed. I wanted to be broken and rebuild.
That night, these thoughts remained unconscious.
But I knew I wanted Samuel in every way a woman can want a man and for him to be the last man I ever had. When he left I desired his baby and that was when I knew I was in way over my head. And definitely way over Samuel’s head.

10 days after our one night we broke up
We have not spoken since.

I twisted and turned, counted pros and cons. Did I win because I wasn’t broken? Did I loose because it never got beyond one night? Could I go back to the way I was? Would I still be able to love, when I wasn’t rescued? Able to give, when I wasn’t taken? Able to commit, when I wasn’t owned?

Five and a half weeks since that one night I still don’t know if the price I paid was worth it.

Samuel’s place has not been taken, nor do I have feelings for another man the way I had for him. But two men who have been in my online life for a while, have come closer. One sometimes calls. One lives nearby. One is married. One has a child. One has a religion that isn’t mine. And both are torn, intrigued, in doubt. Will they see me? Do they even want to? What is the best case scenario and what the worst? And it wasn’t until tonight that I realized why they have set dates and then cancelled. Why they are unable to make up their minds. But now I know.

Because to them I am the older woman who understands them. Who listens, who flirts. I am where they feel mature but sexy. Strong but free. To one I am the embodiment of love, creativity and intimacy but to both I am lust. To these two mid20 men I am their big black man, a sexual fantasy in the flesh, that once there? – can not be controlled nor manipulated, but will simply have to have its course.

In retrospect I don’t blame myself for not giving them clear cut advice on what to do, because how could I? How far would I have been willing to go, if I had met Samuel when I was involved? Which vows would I have been willing to break? Which lies would I have told? Which Gods would I have forsaken?

In the case of the two taken men, who long for me, it is not my decision to make. It is not I, who has to draw up the list of pros and cons.

Tonight I had a drink with a friend. It was in the same bar where me and Samuel met, where we shared our first kiss, I crawled onto his lap, and the waiter joked about us fondling.
My friend finished her drink and I left. I headed for my bike, passing noisy terraces and avoiding the groups that prowled the main street. I felt men staring. Piercing eyes on my butt, my bag. I smelled booze and pot. I quickened my pace.

I squeezed my eyes and clenched my jaw. On edge, ready to defend myself.

Everything was normal.

Home

At the sound of the door, two small shadows make their way towards us.
“ Ah! You’re a cat woman.”
Samuel’s big sweater fills my tiny hall. He places a messenger bag on the saddle of my bicycle.
He squats down, big fingers plucking through the white fur.
“That one is diabetic,”
A wide smile crosses his face. “So was mine! You give it insulin too?”

He leaves his phone and keys under the mirror. His empty shoes next to my high heels.
“I had no idea it would still be so cold at night,” I shiver.

I flip the switch. The bare light shines on us, on a pile of boxes, an unconnected computer, on a roll of carpet for my spare room.
“I don’t even have blinds yet.” I excuse myself.
“You have a Nimba!”
The wooden fertility sculpture with the sharply hooked nose looks small in his hands. The black layer of coaled wood has worn down.
“We used to live in Nigeria,” I say.
A solemn glance crosses over his face. “So does my father.”
His voice has dropped. There is an African word in his sentence that I don’t understand.

I reach up to kiss him, caress the biceps and chest through his clothes. Light as a feather he lifts me up. I bury my nose in his neck to smell him.
“I think it took ten whole minutes before you kissed me at the bar!” he smiles in my ear.
“It’s your scent,” I say between sniffs. “No. That’s not true. It’s everything.”

White carpet. White bed. White sheets. In the only room of the house that looks decent we undress each other. Passing cars, streetlights, moonlight. My skin looks fairer, his looks darker. I rub my legs to his. I press my breasts to his chest. Cub my hands around this skull. I cry tears in his arms when he asks me if it has really been a year.

“Tell me about Nigeria.”

And he tells me about spending his holidays in Lagos, about the sea. About the Yoruba, and missionaries who converted the parts of Nigeria where the climate was mild. He tells about the Jos Plateau, still torn between Islam and Christianity.
“Where did you live?” he asks my skin.

He tells about the North, about the Sahel, and that the desert expands every year, robbing the Touareg of their cattle.
“The drought started in the 70s, when you lived there.”
“Touareg were our night watch,” I whisper.

His Dutch mother raised him in the Netherlands.
His dark skin on Dutch schools and my light tan between my black classmates.
He got swimming diplomas when I jumped in pools without supervision.
Samuel sled snow, while little Lauren caught snakes.
Our youths are a distorted mirror image of each other.

I stumble out of the bed naked. “Give me some time to find my condoms. I didn’t bother to unpack them.”

His head is resting on his hand and he throws me a superior smile.

Name

The eyes are still black. Charcoal-like streaks cover his lower and upper eyelids. Mascara thickens the eye lashes that are no doubt already long and thick by themselves.
“Remind me. Why did I agree to keep this make-up on?” The first words of the young man. He must be somewhere in his early twenties. “I’m small, coloured, and now I look gay.”
My date pushes his fists deep into the pockets of his off-white jeans. A heavy buckle is pulled down a few centimetres. A bright blue shirt loosely covers the flat belly.
I make resolutions to go on a hunger fast as soon as I m home.
“If it bothers you we can take it off,” I look up to the Indian eyes again. “I like it though.”
He pulls up his shoulders and grants me a smile.
“Who minds a little more mockery? I walked around teenagers all day, with nothing but a cloth to cover my loins.”
We go for a drink in his favourite hang-out. Sunlit shiny skyscrapers mark the way.

“And nachos with melted cheese….” The waitress smacks our order on our table. Lucas barely manages to hold down his chuckle until she’s out of hearing distance.
“Personnel comes in two flavours here. Either unbelievably nice, or unbelievably rude,” he explains. “They’re both equally entertaining.”
He re-settles. The hard bench of the terrace is uncomfortable, but it allows us to sit very close to each other. Neither one of us touch the chairs.
“I have a question. Why are you called Lucas? Didn’t they give you an Indian name before you were adopted?”
He shifts his weight away from me.
“They did. But it’s a really weird name. It’s an animal in Dutch. Or something sexual. And no, it’s not Puss.”
“Ram,” I say. The r rolls superior over the nachos. The a an arrogant long vowel, “You were named Ra’am.”
He looks at me in disbelief. “No one has ever, ever guessed that!”
“Any yoga teacher would guess that.”
Ram squeezes a slice of lemon into the bottle of his Mexican beer. “My parents are Christians.”
I think of something comforting to say. “Mine went to nude beaches.”

The few hours we have fly by at staggering speed. He joins me on the train home, so that we can spend another half hour together.
“This was fun,” he thanks me, as the station approaches where he will leave me. “I didn’t tell you before, but this was my first date in two years.”
“Two years eh? Was she that great?” I guess.
He nods. “Yeah. And she wasn’t even mine,”

“Mine wasn’t mine either, and I still think about him every day.”
“Benjamin!” he refers to my blog. Ram knows my website that pretty much covers every bed I ever slept in. “At least you didn’t waste two years waiting,” he smiles.
“So is that was this is about?” Our eyes meet. “Ram, is this about sex?”
The charcoal eyes hesitate. The mouth looks for words that don’t want to be found. I kiss him.
“Wow,” he smiles. “And thank you.”

Christians versus nude-beaches.
But for once I keep my mouth shut.

My friend LS Harteveld ~ field report by Marieke

It’s been a year today, that I first rang the bell of my yoga teacher LS Harteveld.

“Ha! You look like an archaeologist!” she welcomed me as she opened the door. I inspected my clothes, but couldn’t detect any shovels or Sahara sand.
“Your bag is green, and you wear your strap across your chest,” LS Harteveld explained. “Maybe you were sent to dig up my sex life.”
I didn’t quite know how to respond to that, but toughened up and shuffled inside.
“I study anthropology,” I said.

LS Harteveld and I planned on writing together every day. She intended to finish her novel Mango, I needed to get my thesis done. My green bag held a laptop and two chocolate muffins.
“They’re for with our coffee,” I excused myself for bringing such an unhealthy snack. “If you eat sugar, that is.”
“Of course I do! And I love muffins!” she laughed. “What do you think of me? That I am one of those fungus girls?”

Fungus girls: Women, between 30 and 40, who do not eat sugar or other refined carbohydrates, because alternative medicine claims vaginal Candida has infested their organs.

LS Harteveld also enlightened me on the concept of male group masturbation, the preferred size of an erect penis (categorized on what you want to do with it), and the beauty of male genitals. She considered ignorance a threat to spiritual growth. Which was the only trait she shared with my Swami at the yoga ashram.

In March LS Harteveld found out her best friend had screwed her over big time. This was when she taught by example how to hate properly. (it involved exploding like Rumpelstiltskin on a daily basis)
In Summer she would ask me to lie in bed with her, to check if it was big enough for a lover and two cats. After this, she started dating dark men, up to 1meter 80.
In Fall she went on her first holiday in years, because she now had me to look after her diabetic cat.
At Christmas we introduced each other to our families.
On New Years Eve we shared our annual depression at home on the couch. It was our best New Years Eve in years.

LS Harteveld and I see each other nearly every day. We share muffins, love, clothes, and that small double bed. All platonic.

I still don’t throw tantrums the way she does. But I did notice I had become a bit more evil when I was at a party recently and someone declined a piece of cake stating with a hint of spiritual arrogance, that she lived without sugar. Before I knew it I heard myself ask:
“Let me guess: Candida?”

Marrying Noa

“Can you write something special for your student X? She is getting married.”
It took me, “Sanne, the yoga teacher”, one day and a glass of wine to come up with a deep, moving piece on yoga, commitment, and marital bliss. My student would love it. And the universal message also made it a solid contribution to my weekly blog. With still 5 days to go before I had to post it, I spent my week catching up with housekeeping, indulged in decadent two hour yoga sessions, enjoyed sun, friends and the good life. It was the most relaxed blogger week ever.

Feedback from the wedding circle fuelled my excellent mood: “We love your contribution! Maybe you should write a column for Yoga magazine ”

It was official: Sanne Harteveld, the successful yoga teacher, was ready to expand her career to writing. Her heartwarming words would touch the souls of many.

“Over my dead body!” a voice in my head shrieked. Lauren Harteveld. The writer in me had no interest in supporting any marriages, or in becoming the new insipid blogger for some vanilla yoga site.
“But I want to inspire people on their path,” Sanne said.
“Shanti shanti,” Lauren sneered sarcastically. “Get real! And you hate marriage.”
“Not so!” Sanne objected. “I would sacrifice my whole life for one man you know.”
“Yeaheah! Just to get in on those first years of steamy sex, “ Lauren stood her ground. “That’s not marriage. That’s cutting a deal.”

Sanne wanted a post on marriage.
Lauren wanted to promote her book by writing about Noa.

With one hour to their deadline, Sanne and Lauren sat down together. First they opened Lauren’s manuscript, and reread the chapters on Noa. They also checked his Hyves, and Googled for an actor whose picture they could use. Then they wrote something they both agreed on:

This is Eka Darville (see photo).
Eka is an actor, but not very famous.
He does not have Hyves.
Eka looks very much like Noa.
Noa is in my book.
Noa is a normal person but he has a 1000 friends on Hyves.
Noa and I saw each other twice.
Our hands wanted to touch each other all the time.
I would marry Noa, but not Eka because I never met him.
The end.

Noa LS Harteveld is described in the enovel Dutch American Diary. (online next month)

Eka Darville plays Pietros in Spartacus – Blood and Sand episode 3,4, 6 and 7
LS Harteveld opened his social network sites
http://ekadarville.hyves.nl/
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=109332619090819&ref=nf
Let’s give Eka Darville a 1000 fans!!

Finding boyfriend

I have a thing for dark men. The past 18 months, the men in my life were typically caramel, mocha, or chocolate and barely twenty. Sometimes I adored them from afar. Sometimes we became lovers. But they were always, one way or another, unavailable. I wanted 2010 to be different. And in order to find something mutual, I was ready to move up.

“Dear Universe,
I, Lauren, now welcome into my life, a beautiful boyfriend. Dark, between 27 and 37. He’s an academic, like me. He is successful, ambitious, uncreative, overworked, and suffering from spiritual poverty. I will cure him from the last three, and in return he will inspire me to work hard and make more money. He is crazy in love with me, and I am crazy in love with him. Our relationship is passionate and loving, and we are both very happy.
Thank you.”

Now that the Universe knew who to send, all I needed to do was to find him. And I knew just the girl to help me out: Nathalie. When it comes to meeting guys, she is the one to talk to.

Nathalie likes to go out, but will also invite you for a sleep-over with tea, all the cookies you can eat, a double bed, and breakfast with eggs. I always leave with the feeling of falling short, but I do enjoy her Royal treatment.
Nathalie, on the other hand, loved my change of mind:
“I am sooooo happy that you’re over those young guys!” She welcomed the new task of finding me a coloured successful academic. “We can now finally go to the over-30 bars. Maybe I will meet someone nice as well.”
I turned pale at the word “over-30 bar”, but quickly smothered my feelings with two pieces of confetti cake. Over 30 bar! Yay! This was before I knew what such a place looked like.

On Nathalie’s Barbie-pink scooter we went to three bars. The last one had good atmosphere, service and drinks. The first two had all the customers, strong bare light, huge windows, and eighties music. Hundreds of gray mouse outfits offered a direct portal to the early 90’s. These guys wore sweaters that were tight around the belly; not small t-shirts, covering mocha coloured six packs. Their teeth were stained by cigarettes or Rioja; no pearly whites, smiling in chocolate dark faces. Dating 30+ was not for the faint at heart. “Do they have something to eat here?” I weakly suggested. “I don’t feel too well.”

After our three-bar adventure we needed a breather and went to our old hang-outs, two South American inspired lounge bars. Big leather Cuban chairs. Dark corners. Dimmed light. They even had a salsa night. I immediately ordered two cocktails, because they came with umbrella’s, and feasted on hot snacks ( bitterballen from Dobbe!) even though I am a vegetarian.
“Everything is so nice here,” I sighed, as I sipped my drink and stared over the dance floor. “Do you think I will ever find a boyfriend?”
Nathalie followed my gaze.
“ Oh no! Don’t you dare!” she warned me.
“ What?” I asked between sips.
“ The kid! I bet he’s not even 20 yet!”
She was right. I was staring at a young dark boy.
“Can’t I just go over and see if he’s handsome?” I begged.
But Nathalie wouldn’t have any of it.

We ended our night at a place where girls dance on the bar, and a rock cafe with live music. Neither one held beauty nor brains, but neither did we anymore, so that was okay. At 2 a.m. she pulled me from the barstool. “Let’s go home. I have sushi for us, in the fridge.” The next morning I went through her eBay wardrobe: all the stuff she wanted to sell. I tried a pair of wide jeans, and asked her how much they were.
“Nothing. Please have them. They look just perfect on you.”

The brand of the jeans was For All Mankind.
And the model The boyfriend.