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  I didn’t want to see it, because if it was large and sparkly I might be dazzled enough to say yes.

  Smiling, he slid it across the table. “I do hope you’ll say yes.”

  Against my will, my shallow-minded right hand reached over and snatched up the box. My other hand, just as superficial, joined in, and before I knew it, the lid was up and I was looking at the

  smallest

  fucking

  diamond chip I’d ever seen.

  “No, Henderson. No, I don’t think so,” I happily responded as I pushed the box back across the table.

  Five minutes later when the waiter brought the dessert menus, Henderson’s mouth was still hanging open in shock. I skipped on the dessert and ordered myself a glass of champagne. Henderson and I were through. I needed to celebrate.

  Geneva

  okay, so let me just get this out in the open, right from Jump Street: I weigh 230 pounds.

  For the past year I’ve been quite comfortable with my bodacious body. Prior to that I’d been on every diet program known to man. But a little over a year ago I snagged one of the finest men I’d ever seen. I mean Idris Elba fine, and to top it off, he’s a young thang.

  Now lower your eyebrows and swallow that comment you want to sling at me about cradle robbing and any other negative euphemism you’ve got caught in the back of your throat, because I’ve heard it all and don’t need to hear any more.

  Oh, sorry—what, you were going to ask if the sex was good because you’ve got your eye on a young thang yourself?

  Well, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t. It’s the best sex I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lot of sex. Believe me, Mother has had some sex!

  But I digress.

  So while this brother—his name is Deeka, by the way—was working hard to get next to me, I was pushing him away.

  Why?

  Because I couldn’t believe that someone that looked like him was interested in me. Not that I think I’m unattractive, but he’s gorgeous—Hollywood good-looking—a real specimen, if you know what I mean.

  So anyway, there I was, blocking like I’d never blocked before, fending him off like the plague, but do you think that deterred him?

  Not at all. He just kept coming back, doing everything and anything to get me to say, “Yeah, I’ll go out with you.”

  Not that I didn’t want him next to me, you understand. Shoot, since we’re being all open and shit, laying it out on the table, as they say—I wanted nothing more than to have that man next to me. In fact, my fantasy was to have him up on top of me and inside of me—if you get my drift.

  But what I didn’t want was for him to see my dimpled thighs, the folds of blubber around my waist, and the unruly gray hairs that were springing up around my pleasure place, rapidly wiping out the shiny black ones of my youth.

  I complained about it to my friend Noah and he just said, “Your fat ain’t bothering no one but you, Geneva. Get over it and give the boy a chance.”

  Well, he had a point. I was the one obsessing about it, not Deeka. In fact, the only time it ever came up in conversation was when I brought it up, and then Deeka’s stock response was “Baby, I love you just the way you are.”

  Yeah, we’re in love.

  So I gave Deeka the green light and am so glad I did. My life has changed in ways that I never imagined. For one, I’m happy most all of the time. I mean, there are those days when an ignorant customer may say or do something to upset me (I work at a diner, and ignorant customers are what keeps it in business), but other than that, I’m a ball of sunshine.

  Recently, though, I’ve suffered a little setback.

  My six-year-old daughter, Chartreuse, Charlie for short, participated in her school’s talent show, and being the proud mama that I am, I went and took a seat right up in the front row.

  My little girl was going to recite a poem. One she’d made up all on her own.

  I politely applauded through the ten acts that came before her and then my Charlie strolled onto the stage, her little Vaseline-slathered face gleaming beneath the stage lights. I got all choked up, jumped up out of my seat, and yelled, “That’s my baby! That’s my baby girl!” even before the principal introduced her.

  Principal Keane, a bald-headed white man with one blue eye and one green eye, cleared his throat loudly over the intercom and threw a stony warning at me with his eyes. I stopped clapping, apologized softly under my breath, and sat down.

  “Miss Chartreuse Holliday will be reciting a poem titled ‘Jelly,’” Principal Keane said.

  I beamed, held my breath, and waited.

  Charlie moved to the microphone, looked proudly at me, and bellowed:

  My mother’s belly

  shakes like jelly!

  My mother’s belly

  shakes like jelly!

  Jelly, jelly, jelly!

  I was horrified. I wanted to curl up and die right where I sat.

  For a moment the auditorium was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. And I could feel more than see the dozens of eyes on me. Then the snickering began, followed by a loud guffaw, and then somewhere off in the distance I heard Principal Keane say, “Let’s give Miss Holliday a round of applause for her original poem.”

  The clapping started in the back of the room. It was a slow, unsure clap that took about forty seconds to catch on until it became a thunderous applause that rolled like a wave through the audience.

  Me, I was ten different shades of red. I wanted to get up and run from the building. I wanted to cry, but most of all I wanted to strangle that little crumb-snatcher formerly known as my daughter!

  She’d shared our secret dance with the world.

  The jelly dance was something I’d begun doing for her when she was just a toddler. She’d try her best to imitate me, and as she got older, she actually became really good at it.

  It was something we both did in our underwear, up on our toes, arms flapping like wings, necks jerking like chickens, and stomachs wiggling and jiggling like jelly.

  “Did you like it, Mommy?”

  I was standing in a dark corner of the auditorium, trying my best to hide my face behind the open program I held in my hand. I looked down at my baby girl and had a horrific vision of slapping her so hard that her black face flew off and splattered against the wall behind her.

  I bit down hard on my bottom lip, dug my hands into the pockets of my jeans, and said, “Yes, baby, I loved it.”

  So that brings me to what I really want to tell you. I haven’t been able to get that little poem of Charlie’s out of my head. Every time I undress, walk past a mirror, or catch a full-length view of myself in the pane-glass fronts of department stores, and even when I lie down with my man, all I can hear is “My mother’s belly shakes like jelly. Jelly! Jelly! Jelly!”

  I can’t take it anymore.

  I need to lose weight, and in order to accomplish that, I have to stop eating—or shall I say stop eating so much of what it is I eat. I also have to start exercising. But I barely have the energy to run behind Charlie and, thank God, most of the sex Deeka and I have takes place lying down.

  The few times we did it standing up against the wall left me feeling like I’d run a mile instead of worked my way up to an orgasm.

  So the way I see it, my situation is serious, and serious situations call for serious measures, and that’s when I decided to call the number on the ad I’d ripped out of Healthy Life magazine, which I’d been flipping through at my gynecologist’s office.

  I’d had the glossy piece of paper tucked into my wallet for about a year. Every now and again I’d pull it out and read the declaration:

  BIOTHIN NATURAL DIET PILLS

  DO ALL THE WORK FOR YOU.

  I was sold and ordered a two-month supply.

  Which leads me to now. Here I am, pill in one hand, glass of water in the other, and hope in my heart that this will be my final battle in the war of the weight.

  Wish me luck…

  Gulp.

&nb
sp; Noah

  we didn’t even make it to the bedroom.

  We’d had a little tiff that morning before he left for work, leaving me angry all day long, and not everybody knows this about me, but being angry makes me horny, so when Zahn walked into the flat that evening I greeted him at the door buck naked.

  “Oh, my,” Zahn had said, and grinned when he looked down at my rock-hard erection.

  I threw myself against him and began covering his face in kisses. Zahn lifted me up and I wrapped my legs around his back as I ripped at the dove gray Izod shirt he wore.

  I’d worked myself into a sex-hungry frenzy. I was out of my mind with lust when I bit down into his lip. The taste of his blood in my mouth took me to a level I’d never been to before.

  Zahn, unable to make it to the bedroom, turned right and plopped me down onto the kitchen counter, where he carefully laid me back, kissed my navel, and then took my engorged penis into his mouth.

  It didn’t matter that we’d had sex on the kitchen counter and then down on the living room floor—I was still mad at him.

  We lay naked on the Berber carpet, our backs facing each other. We were quiet, both knowing that we’d reached a crossroads in our relationship.

  Some things had gone on over the past year that made me think that maybe I’d committed myself to the wrong man. Don’t get me wrong, I love that skinny little white boy to death, but lately, I don’t know, things have started to change.

  It could be me, going through some midlife crisis; I will be forty this year.

  I find myself searching for lines in my face, pushing myself harder at the gym, trying to stay away from carbohydrates and alcohol. I drink damn near a gallon of water a day and eat so many fruits and vegetables…Well, let’s just say that constipation is a fading memory.

  Zahn, he’s not as health conscious as I am, but he should be; he’s five years older than me. He spent his younger years dropping acid, smoking cigarettes, and drinking like a fish. He hasn’t been kind to his body, and it’s beginning to show.

  When I first met him, he was smoking a pack a day. When we finally got together and I started to complain about it, he just didn’t understand my aversion to it.

  You see, in Europe, it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t smoke. And those “Truth” commercials you see all over American television about what tobacco does to your body—well, those are nonexistent here.

  Smoking is an acceptable way of life on this side of the Atlantic.

  I finally got him to quit, but I suspect that he’s picked it up again.

  I smell it as soon as he walks through the door. He claims it’s from the patrons in the pub he frequents before coming home from work. I never taste it on his tongue, but smoker’s mints can be a powerful cloak.

  One time when I was complaining and accusing him of picking up the nasty habit again, he turned on me and barked, “Maybe you’ve driven me to it.”

  I was stunned. Zahn hardly ever yelled at me.

  While I stood there clutching my chest in shock, he stormed out of the flat and didn’t return home until two the next morning.

  Of course he reeked of scotch and Marlboros.

  Okay, maybe I have driven him to smoking again. Maybe I am the cause of the tension between us.

  You see, I went back on my word, but in my defense it was something I’d committed to in the throes of passion many years earlier. Okay, just three years earlier.

  A child.

  Zahn wanted a child, and when we decided that we would spend the rest of our lives together, I agreed that we would, in the future, adopt a little girl or boy. Or if that didn’t work out, sign up for one of those turkey baster procedures where my sperm would be injected into some well-compensated willing female.

  I agreed, because I love my man and the thought of being a complete family made him happy and I loved seeing my man happy.

  But to tell the truth, I don’t really like kids. I’ve got to be honest here. I love them from a distance, but I can’t stand to be around them for more than an hour at a time. Babies are okay, but once they hit age two, don’t bring them back around me until they turn eighteen and we can have a conversation.

  Children are messy, loud, and needy. I have a beautiful flat here with very expensive furnishings and priceless pieces of art. For God’s sake, what are we supposed to do, trade in our two-seater Mercedes for a minivan?

  I am not the one. I like my life; a child would just ruin it.

  When I voiced my opinion about the whole thing Zahn was quiet…For three days he was quiet while I walked around on eggshells, not knowing exactly what he was putting together in his mind.

  When he finally did decide to speak—what do you think he spoke about?

  Children!

  “Noah, when we got together you agreed to this. Why are you going back on your word?”

  “Did I really agree, Zahn? I just remember saying that it was a possibility.”

  “You agreed, Noah.”

  “Were we having sex at the time?” I teased. “You know I agree to anything when you have your dick up my—”

  “Stop it, Noah!”

  He stormed out of the house and was gone for most of the evening. When he returned he announced that he would be spending the summer in New Delhi.

  “India?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  “They need me to oversee the opening of the new furniture factory.”

  “The whole summer?”

  “Yes—it will be good for us, the separation. I think we both need time to think.”

  “You don’t want me to come with you?”

  “I think it will be best if you went back to New York. I’m sure your friends and family would love to see you, especially since you missed spending Christmas with them last year.”

  Zahn said all that while looking me straight in the eye. His stare was stone cold, his jaw tight. I was sure that this was the beginning of the end of us.

  The thought of losing him made me feel sick to my stomach, but I wasn’t about to budge on this. Not now, not ever.

  “Oh, okay,” I murmured, and walked away with my tail between my legs.

  I needed to get away from this gloomy city any goddamn way. The rain, the chill, and the fucking cigarette smoke everywhere you turned. Come to think of it, I really didn’t like London very much. New York would be a welcome change…maybe even a permanent one.

  Chevy

  i lost my apartment a few years ago because a pair of Manolo Blahniks was more important to me than paying my rent. My childhood friend Noah allowed me to move into his three-story brownstone. Well, he didn’t really allow me in—he kind of left me to house-sit and when he returned all my shit was there.

  Noah is living in England now, and he only comes through once or twice a year and that’s never for more than two or three weeks at a time. He tries to act as if he hates having me in his house (okay, sometimes I forget to pay him rent), but I know deep down inside he’s glad to have me here because a vacant house ain’t nothing but a big old yellow and green WELCOME sign for burglars.

  I’ve got it pretty good. Anyone else would have a load of money saved, but not me—to date I’ve maxed out both my Visa and MasterCard.

  They were legitimate purchases. I have a high-profile position and need to dress the part. And anyway, designers should be paying me some type of commission for wearing their shit. I’m so fine, I make their clothes look good—not the other way around.

  Now, American Express is a whole other story—I can’t begin to tell you what’s going on with that card. The best I can figure is either I blacked out somewhere last month and went on a spending spree or that little green and white card slipped from my wallet and went out on the town without me.

  Six thousand dollars later, Mr. Hubert in collections is calling my job and cell day and night, leaving all kinds of threatening messages.

  I told myself when I got my current job as a personal assistant to the hi
gh-profile radio personality Anja that I’d clear up my debt and open a savings account. I told myself that I would begin to act like an adult. And for a month or two, I did.

  But keeping up with the Joneses ain’t always an easy task. And keeping up with my boss, Anja, is even more difficult.

  But first let me hip you on something that few people know: Anja is really a man, and I’ve been doing him on and off for a year now.

  Oh, please, don’t look so surprised—that woman sitting next to you on the train may be a man or vice versa.

  In this world, people do what they need to do to get by or get over or just get famous. At the beginning of his career Andre started dressing in drag just for kicks—personally I really think he enjoys wearing women’s underwear, but don’t let that freaky shit fool you: he is all man when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it.

  Why do I sleep with him, you ask?

  What a stupid question. Women have been screwing their way to the top for centuries. Need I remind you of the power of pussy?

  Pussy has felled empires, and I’m counting on mine to bring Andre to his knees. He’s a fool because he believes that the seventy-five thousand dollars a year I’m getting, along with our hot sexual romps, is enough to keep me satisfied and in my place.

  I want his job, his money, and his fame, and I have no doubt that I will get it. It’s going to take some time and planning, but I’m willing to make sacrifices and may even blow the whistle on his cross-dressing ass to get it.

  The only obstacle in my way is Dante. Dante is the flame that hired me. We were cool in the beginning, but then he realized that Anja was favoring me over him and he lost his ever-loving mind.

  We had a fight in a club last year and I’m sure we both thought we would be fired, but what Anja did was reassign Dante as my assistant.

  A fate worse than death for him. I’m sure if he didn’t have eight designer dogs and two Egyptian felines to feed and house, he would have quit his job right then and there rather than work under me.