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Overview
In Eileen M. Johnson's "How the Other Half Lives," longtime friends Jamellah and Fernecia are having trouble with the men in their lives. And as their worlds seem to crumble, they must count on their friendship to keep it together.
In "Love Is 2 Blame," by V. Anthony Rivers, Malcolm is devastated after his two-year relationship with Shaylisa ends. And trying to move on will not be easy—but the lovely Zahara may be the perfect woman to show Malcolm what true love is all about.
In Zane's "Staring Evil in the Face," Robier has everything: a successful career, beautiful children, and the woman of his dreams. Robier has loved Tiphanie since college and keeping his marital vows to love his family unconditionally has always been easy—until Tiphanie is involved in a horrible car accident that changes the entire course of their lives.
From nervous breakdowns to drug addiction, in Love Is Never Painless, Zane, Johnson, and Rivers have penned powerful stories that will have readers talking and bring a new perspective to their own relationships.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781416543701 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Atria Books |
| Publication date: | 09/18/2007 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 535,207 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Eilen M. Johnson resides in Louisiana and is also a contributor to Zane's Blackgentlemen.com.
V. Anthony Rivers is the author of Daughter by Spirit, Everybody Got Issues, and My Life Is All I Have. He is a contributor to Zane's Love Is Never Painless.
Read an Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
Have you ever felt like you have done everything conceivable to make a relationship work and there is nothing but drama anyway? Have you ever loved someone more than life itself, but they disvalue that love? Have you ever sacrificed something for another, only to have them not appreciate your generosity? All of us, as we all have feelings, have experienced something like this.
Life is strange. So many people cross our paths during our predetermined amount of years on earth. Many of them will be in our life from day one to the final hour. Many will come into our lives later and hang in there until the very end. Then there are the "other ones." People who are only in our lives for a minute, a day, a week, a month, a year, or a few years. We cannot understand how the relationships with them can start out seemingly perfect and end in total madness.
Whenever I think of a love lost, I hear the words to "Isn't It a Shame?" by LaBelle in my head. The questions asked throughout that song have always hit home with me. How can two people love each other, create children together, cohabitate, build a life together, and then end up hating each other in the end? No one enters into a relationship or marriage expecting it to fail. No one gives of their heart and soul in exchange for being mistreated, either mentally or physically. Yet, anger happens. Abuse happens. Cheating happens. Death happens.
While all of the above can be devastating, the truth of the matter is that old adage: "It is better to love and have lost than to never have loved at all." No matter what the circumstances, no matter what the outcome, love is what makes life worth living. Love is the center of the universe. Love can move mountains. Love can also tear down walls. Love can also kill. Love is never painless.
I know that from personal experience. I have been hurt by those who claimed to love me. It was disappointing, but it does not mean that I will ever give up on finding the right one. There is a man out there who complements me on every level, who can appreciate what I have to offer more than he craves his next high, who can mirror my ambitions with his own, who can uplift me instead of trying to hold me back. Meanwhile and between while, I have children to raise, challenges to meet, and history to make.
Thanks to V. Anthony Rivers and Eileen M. Johnson for participating in this anthology. If you walk away from this book thinking that you should reevaluate your outlook on love, then we have accomplished our goals. I wish you success, I wish you happiness, but most of all, I wish you love.
Blessings,
Zane Copyright © 2006 by Zane
From How the Other Half Lives
by Eileen M. Johnson
Jamellah pulled the heavy Persian rug toward the hallway and off the wall-to-wall carpeting. Grabbing the vacuum cleaner and wrapping the thin cord around her slim brown hand, she turned the power on and began the task of cleaning the carpet. Humming an old Commodores tune, she pushed and pulled the vacuum until beads of perspiration formed above her nut-brown upper lip. Not only was today Friday, her usual cleaning day, but she was expecting company. Not just any company, but that of the sexy black male persuasion. Kenny was thirty-three years old, the owner of a small but profitable construction company, and very married.
The fact that Kenny was married did not disappoint Jamellah. All of her boyfriends were married. As she always told her best friend, Fernecia, the more happily married they were, the better. Married men were low maintenance and that was right up Jamellah's alley. Married men required no commitment, you didnt have to deal with them 24/7, and they were usually extra passionate and extra generous. That's the way she liked her men. She had actually started dating married men at a very young age after quickly growing weary of young, inexperienced boys who were in her face constantly. So at nineteen, she had gone out and met Clarence at an after-work happy hour. Clarence was a twenty-eight-year-old dreamboat who already had his own small investment banking firm, the fabled house on the hill, and his own Benz. He also had a very somber and sexually unresponsive wife. This was a disappointment for Clarence but a blessing for Jamellah. She and Clarence participated in a hot and heavy fling that lasted until she turned twenty-one. In those two years, he managed to give her a used but still fashionable Audi, a pair of stunning two-carat diamond solitaire earrings, and a nearly permanent headache from his complaining about how unhappy his home life was. So after getting him to secure the financing on a snazzy little town house and helping her to set up a small but lucrative stock portfolio, she gave him a well put together story. With well-rehearsed but very persuasive tears rolling down her cheeks, Jamellah told Clarence about how she could no longer sleep at night without him and how she wanted him to leave his wife. As much as Clarence wanted to be with the cute and sexually uninhibited Jamellah, he realized that the state they lived in was a community property state, and under no circumstances was he ready or willing to give his tight-lipped wife half in a divorce. After an Oscar-worthy performance, Jamellah told him that she might be willing to get over him in exchange for a few parting gifts. Relieved that Jamellah withdrew her staunch ultimatum and waved the white flag, he presented her with a nice diamond tennis bracelet, tuition for her last semester of college, a discreet and heavy deposit in her money-market account, and grateful thanks for the two years of her life that shed devoted to him. Amazingly, they parted as friends, and would occasionally meet for a drink and a quickie.
Three months later, feeling pleasantly boosted with her car, town house, stock portfolio, and degree, Jamellah was once again on the prowl. Love could definitely wait a few more years. Right now, she craved more security. After landing a job as an entry-level adjuster for a large insurance agency, she soon began to use her huge office building as a hunting ground.
She paired crisp linen business suits with soft, lacy peekaboo camisoles and tall heels for a look that was professional yet sexy. Each morning, she painstakingly applied her makeup and arranged her extension-enhanced tresses to look like she had just stepped out of a magazine. Her good looks immediately drew the attention of several of her colleagues. Pretty soon, both her looks and her strong work ethic drew the attention of one of the company's VPs. In the first six months that Jamellah worked for Southwestern Life and Casualty, not only did she do desk work but she also did her homework. She knew which of her suitors had the most pull within the company, who earned the most, who drove what, who was married to whom, and who could get her where she wanted to be.
After chatting with Hugh McDonough, vice president of operations, at the Christmas party, Jamellah soon made him her prey. From that point on, she always made it a point to look extra sexy at the Thursday afternoon staff meetings that he presided over. It also helped that she was always full of provocative conversation at all social functions.
Within three months of the Christmas party, Jamellah was taking all of the gifts that Hugh presented her with, and he, in turn, accepted all her free time and talent. From her prior research, she knew that his wife, Meredith McDonough, cared only about the Times-Picayune society page and the city's black bourgeoisie.
Although Hugh was a lusty and insatiable lover and much older than she generally liked them, he was definitely the route that Jamellah needed to take.
By the time Christmas rolled around again, Jamellah had been promoted to a competitive yet promising position as an underwriter. She received this promotion partly because of her hard work but more so because of Hugh's iron influence on the powers that be. With her cushy new job came a cushy new gift from Hugh. Jamellah gladly got rid of her old car for Hugh's gift, a brand-new, shiny black Audi A8 that she drove to her office with pleasure and pride.
No matter how discreet the two attempted to keep their involvement, it was unmistakable. One minute Jamellah was trudging around the city assessing claims and the next she was three floors up in the building, her mind far from flood, fire, and accident damage. Of course, this did not sit well with the other sisters in the office. They had spent years at Dillard, Xavier, Southern, Alcorn, and Grambling, studying and preparing for corporate America. Some graduated magna and even summa cum laude and were shocked to find out that no matter how much education you got, you often wound up in a surplus pool of black college graduates fighting for entry-level jobs not even near your field. The shock went even further when they realized that a simple blow job or two could catapult a 2.5 GPA graduate like Jamellah into a job it would take them years to move up to. This of course led to their extreme dislike of her.
At forty-five, Hugh was handsome, wealthy, and wise beyond his years. However, for a brief time, he felt something for the twenty-three-year-old Jamellah that could have been mistaken for love. She returned the favor of his expensive gifts and favors with practiced sexual skills and unlimited affection, which he never got at home. Of course it would bother Jamellah when she would see Hugh and Meredith at social gatherings and on the society page, but she understood her place in his life and his place in her career. Hugh, in turn, would often get angry when the water-cooler talk by the agencys black male employees was about Jamellah and her fabled sexual escapades. But since no one in the office building knew about his relationship with her, he had to keep his anger to a minimum in public, but when he was alone with her, he lashed out at her with contempt and disgust.
Contempt and disgust soon turned to jealousy and abuse, and that was when Jamellah decided that it was time to end their allegiance. Knowing that he would not agree with her decision, she came up with a surefire plan to keep her newfound prestige and at the same time end the troublesome relationship. With the urine of a hugely pregnant Fernecia and a Fact Plus pregnancy test, Jamellah managed to convince Hugh that she was carrying his baby. Afraid of the scandal the pregnancy would cause in the uppity black community and the jeopardy it would put his job and marriage in, Hugh quickly ended the relationship, but not without pacifying a threatening Jamellah. Not only did he give her three thousand dollars for a false late-term abortion, but Hugh also gave her five times that amount in hush-hush money. Jamellah could not believe her good fortune, while Hugh could not believe his stupidity. He made it a policy long before hed met Jamellah not to get involved with anyone who was connected with his job. Now he was sharing an office building with a walking time bomb who could easily destroy his life. But for some reason, he had actually fallen in love with the young girl who had given him relieving icy rubdowns when he was in physical pain and soothing hot-oil massages when he wanted to feel pleasure.
Sometimes when his heart and his dick overpowered his reasoning, he contacted her and attempted to renew their ties, but his requests were met with firm refusals and idle yet convincing threats. After one of these threats, which sounded more lethal than usual, Hugh decided to wean and save himself from Jamellah. At the same time, he decided to show her that his love for her had not been in vain.
Jamellah was just coming out of the adjustment period in her new position when a corporate headhunter, who happened to be Hugh's fraternity brother, contacted her about a better-paying and more secure position with an old and stable company in the northeastern part of the city. Overjoyed and aware that this was of Hugh's doing, Jamellah promptly turned in her immediate resignation to Southwestern Life and Casualty.
That was a year and a half ago, and now Jamellah's salary was 25 percent larger and her conscience 100 percent smaller. Since then, she had been through three other married men who shed become involved with for material reasons, and a single black attorney who shed been involved with purely for pleasure.
At twenty-four, Jamellah felt that she was on top of the world. She had a great job, an expensive automobile, and a professionally decorated town house that was on its way to being paid for. She was childless, free, and beautiful, which to her were the most important things in the world. Her family marveled at her success and her friends were mystified by how quickly shed climbed the corporate ladder and gained material wealth. They always knew that she'd get out of the New Orleans ghetto that shed grown up in, but they never guessed that she'd come this far. Unbeknownst to her friends, Jamellah was whoring just as they were, only at a much higher price.
Copyright ©2006 by Zane
How the Other Half Lives copyright ©2006 by Eileen M. Johnson
Table of Contents
CONTENTS
Introduction
How the Other Half Lives
EILEEN M. JOHNSON
Love Is 2 Blame
V. ANTHONY RIVERS
Staring Evil in the Face
ZANE
Acknowledgments
A Word from Zane
What People are Saying About This
"Arguably not since . . . Nancy Friday has American letters produced a purveyor of erotica with such mass-market appeal." — The New York Times
"A legend among her fellow authors." — Today's Black Woman
"Zane has transformed her erotic tales into a cult of personality conglomerate that would make NBA superstars jealous." — Uptown magazine
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