CAROL TAYLOR
BROWN SUGAR
WANDERLUST

WANDERLUST
EROTIC TRAVEL TALES
Part erotica, part travelogue, these edgy, atmospheric, and sexually charged stories explore the desires that are awakened when we are away from the confines of home. Penned by best-selling and up and coming authors, these contemporary, sexy and sophisticated tales take you on trysts around the globe--from the streets of Paris, to the sun-kissed beaches of Jamaica and Hawaii, from the hidden caverns along the Mediterranean to the forbidden banks of the Nile.

CONTRIBUTORS AND STORIES

GLENVILLE LOVELL Sexing the Mountain
DEEP BRONZE Just Another Day
MILES MARSHALL LEWIS Irrésistible
NINA FOXX The Rule of One Thousand
SEKOUWRITES PinkTiaraRainbows
SANDRA KITT The Fixer
PRESTON L. ALLEN Southernmost Triangle
CAROL AMOROSA Angela
JERVEY TERVALON The Grim Gumbo of Love
NALO HOPKINSON Blackberries
BRANDON MASSEY La Segua
TRACY PRICE-THOMPSON Hawaii Five-Oh!
SANDRA JACKSON-OPOKU Fort Jesus
MELVIN E. LEWIS La Linea Negra

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

WANDERLUST

Brown Sugar 4

Brown Sugar 4: Secret Desires
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

The Blacker the Berry, the Sweeter the Juice by Carol Taylor

"I'd just finished breakfast and was sitting with my morning paper in Dimitri's Cafe on Prinsenstraat, when I saw the most beautiful man at the window. He was tall and thin, as many Dutch are, with a long face and narrow sloping nose. Stop there and he'd be just one of the many beautiful people I'd seen all over Amsterdam into Rotterdam and in parts of Belgium.

It was the potent mix of African and Dutch blood running through his veins that composed his features into an odd and wonderfully poetic juxtaposition. He had skin the color of rich cream with a sprinkling of nutmeg freckles across his nose. His eyes were the most astounding shade of blue I'd ever seen. His long nose was offset by full, thick lips and above his prominent forehead sat the biggest, most gloriously kinky, dirty-blond Afro I'd ever seen.

He was beautiful, like rain after a drought, the sun after a storm. He was a gift dropped at my feet and he was looking at me as though I was too.

I'd surprised myself. I wasn't usually attracted to mixed-race blacks, or I never let myself be. It was an unspoken oath, I guess, to not sell out my own deep blackness, which had been held against me for so long. So I signed on to the don't-mix-it-up-and-lighten-the-race program. It had been easy enough until now. Most light-skinned brothers weren't normally interested in me. They usually went for black girls my sister's complexion.

Of my three siblings I was the dark spot in every family photo. My sister's high yellow was at the opposite end of the color spectrum. We all had the same "Chinky" eyes but my sister got most of the Chinese in my Jamaican family. I got most of the African. My two brothers fell somewhere between us. I was closest to my father in color, though two shades darker than he, and my sister was closest to my mother, who could have (and some say should have) passed for white.

Every time relatives put us side by side, fingered our hair, complimenting my sister on her wavy fall and café con leche skin, then turned to shake their heads at my nappy bush and espresso complexion, I put another brick in the foundation. Soon enough, I'd built a wall of ambivalence at best and hatred at worst for light-skinned blacks. They just seemed to have it easier: better hair, better job, lighter skin, lighter load. So it was always the darkest brothers for me. Why not? The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice, right? And I had no problems finding them since I was beautiful and they usually didn't have much luck with the light-skinned sisters.

So I was surprised when I felt an instant attraction to him. He was everything I was not, and everything I'd grown up wanting to be. Every secret desire I'd nurtured as a child and then discarded when I grew older of wanting to be popular, pretty, and light like the cream in my father's coffee and not the rich brew my mother drank black. He was every dream I left on my pillow, every wish on a starry night. Everything I wanted to be for as far back as I could remember was standing in front of me, smiling.

When I smiled back he walked in and sat down at my table. First he spoke to me in French, then German. When I told him I was from New York he switched to English. His name was Malcolm. He was Dutch, Belgian, and West African. He'd moved to Amsterdam three years ago from his hometown of Eindhoven in southwest Holland and was trying to make a living as a painter. His first words to me were "I love the color of your skin. It reminds me of the water in the canals at midnight. May I paint you? You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen."


I'd come to Amsterdam to model. I'd had no luck in New York, where my "natural" look and "strong" features, which I knew meant my close-cropped hair, dark skin, and big lips, had fallen out of favor. I was in Amsterdam because of an apparent appreciation of dark-skinned black women in the Netherlands. They loved my looks here. This was a big change from New York.

Tar baby, coal black, darkie, the names had been endless and endlessly hurtful. That they'd come from friends and family had made it even more painful. "Keep out the sun now, you black enough as is" had started every summer as far back as I could remember. Though I'd grown up to be beautiful enough to make a living as a model, at castings the darkness of my skin always put me at a disadvantage. "Your color is too harsh for this season." "We don't have work for dark girls like you." "You're so beautiful. It's a shame you're so dark." The casting agent would then shake her head, close my book, and dismiss me.

Amsterdam was teaching me a thing or two about beauty. I was learning how to love myself without feeling I was too much this or not enough that. Here, as I walk along the canals, or cycle through the fields of windmills just outside the city center with the Dutch men smiling after me, I am learning how to love myself, how to feel beautiful and desirable.

Secret Desires

Ahhh, secret desires. We all have them, whether we admit it to ourselves or not. Brown Sugar 4 focuses on secret desires because it is a bond that unites us. It doesn't matter who you are, where you live, or what you do. We've all secretly desired something, or often, someone. Our secret desires, those yearnings we hold closest to ourselves, are what most illuminates us, who we really are or who we really want to be.

The Disturbing Pull of Desire

We've all felt the disturbing pull of desire. It may have been brought on by a first glance, an unexpected encounter, the sensual curve of a shoulder, the look in someone's eyes or the smile they gave you, a lover's scent on your fingers or taste on your tongue. Desire is that magnetic pull of one body inexplicably, inextricably, to another. It is the need for something unexplainable, but unmistakable. Desire cannot be explained, because memory, attraction, our senses and needs -- a subtle connection we could never imagine -- shape it.

Secret desires are those things we deny ourselves, perhaps because we think it's not something we should do because it's wrong, because it's bad, or because it might just feel too good. Maybe you desire something outside of the everyday and you think it's wrong because it's not the norm. Or perhaps it's someone we don't think we should be with because of their background or lifestyle. Perhaps society has told us that person is wrong for us, or our parents made the decision for us years earlier. Maybe we abstain because we believe that once we go there we may never find our way back. Don't worry, you're not alone. We've all grappled for control over our needs; we've all buried something so deep down that we realize it's there only when we're facing it head-on.

The stories in Brown Sugar 4 celebrate many different secret desires. Here you'll find stories of yearning with passionate and often surprising results. Whether you secretly desire the preacher's wife, your children's nanny, your best friend, your ex, your brother's wife, or your sister's husband, you'll find something to relate to, to give insight, or simply to turn you on.

These erotic encounters are told by bestselling authors, award-winning literary writers, and performance poets whom you already know and love, writing outside of their genre but in their own particular style about characters you'll recognize in places you'll know. What their stories give you are different glimpses into the many different worlds that make up black America, and truly represents what makes us tick sexually and emotionally."

Brown Sugar
A Collection of Erotic Black Fiction
Plume, 2001

Silk sheets, jazz playing softly on the stereo, black silk against brown bodies in warm sticky embraces. Brown Sugar brings together eighteen original stories by America's premier black authors. Their stories cover the full spectrum of black experience and identity as they reveal sexuality and sensuality in all their myriad forms. Whether you are male or female, gay or straight, this joyous celebration of erotica will transport you to a realm beyond the limits of your sensual imagination. It is a must have book for every lover, as well as every lover of good fiction.

Read more in my Selected Works!

Brown Sugar 2
Great One Night Stands
Simon & Schuster December 2002

If the first Brown Sugar left you wanting more, then feast your senses on Brown Sugar 2 as 18 bestselling black writers celebrate a great one night stand. Their stories set the stage for seduction with a distinctly new flavor, and they are as insightful as they are sexy.

Read more in my Selected Works!

Brown Sugar 3
When Opposites Attract
Simon & Schuster December 2003

Focussing on the universal theme of opposites attracting Brown Sugar 3 continues in the tradition of fresh and sexy black fiction written by best selling authors you know and love.

Read more in my Selected Works!

Brown Sugar 4
Secret Desires
Brown Sugar 4 Secret Desires

Focussing on Secret Desires, one thing we all have: Brown Sugar 4, the final book in the Brown Sugar series is full of fun, sexy and insightful stories, set in New York, L.A., England, and Haiti. Look for it in bookstores in December 2004!

Read More in my Selected Works!

Harlem Homecoming
As I sat in first class, I couldn’t believe I was heading back to the States. I’d been living in Paris for six years, working as a stylist at a fashion magazine when I got my mother’s letter. We’d been in contact since I’d left, but now she wanted me to come home. She didn’t say why, just that she had to see me.
My mother so rarely asked for anything that I knew I’d be on the next flight back. Honestly, I didn’t mind taking a break. My job kept me busy; always packed and ready to leave for a shoot at a moment’s notice. No room for relationships either, but I didn’t mind. If you didn’t care, you didn’t get hurt. I’d been hurt enough. The last time I almost didn’t make it. And here I was heading back to New York, back to Harlem.
***

I exited JFK behind my driver. I took a deep breath and looked around, taking it all in. I couldn’t believe I was here. We were meeting at 7:00. It was 6:15 as the car made its way across the Triborough, the magnificence of 125th street coming into view.
Six years ago, I’d fled the country putting as much distance as possible between myself and the man I’d fallen in love with. I shook my head to dispel the memory.
I leaned forward in my seat. I wanted to see the neighborhood. It had been a minute. I was back in Harlem, where I was born and bred. I asked the driver to let me off on 125th. He looked at me like I was crazy. Giving my outfit the once over he shook his head.
“Are you sure, this is a rough neighborhood?”
I laughed, “Are you kidding? Look at all these white people, all these cops.” I smiled. “Don’t worry, I’m from Harlem.”
He shrugged and pulled over between Park and Madison.
“I’ll deliver your bag.” He said opening my door.
I nodded, sliding my long legs out of the car. Tossing my stole over my shoulders I headed west across 125th towards Madison.
There was the same hustle and bustle, chicken joints and fast food spots, book vendors and jewelry shops, but lots of new buildings. 125th was packed. That certainly hadn’t changed: Africans hawking shea butter and fabric. Sisters sidling up offering braiding services. Drunks loafing near the liquor stores. Project kids hanging out. Everywhere you looked, fine brothers and sisters. Every dreadlocked head making my heart skip a beat.
I slipped on my shades. Turning north on Fifth towards 130th I passed my favorite Church, Mt. Moriah Baptist on 126th. The church ladies would congregate outside in their big hats and Sunday finery, gossiping and laughing. St. Andrews Episcopal on 127th was more staid. No kids running around in front after services. No loud clapping and shouting during. As an only child I’d spent a lot of time watching kids and their parents. My mom and I lived on 130th and Convent, up on the hill. Our apartment was the only good thing my dad left when he took off. Actually, my mom would tell me, he’d left two good things: the apartment and me, because I’d been a baby in my mother’s belly. I always wondered what kind of man could leave his child.
I looked around Fifth; there was still row after row of brownstones, some old, some newly renovated. A few tired tenements were still hanging on, but Fifth had changed. The brownstones were now mostly in various states of renovation and not dilapidation.
130th was like another world after the hustle and bustle of 125th. Serene and peaceful it seemed like the only block with trees, their bushy canopies shading the brownstones beneath. I marveled at how the street had changed. There was still a row of plantation style brownstones near Lenox. I’d always fantasized about buying one and fixing it up. I guess I wasn’t the only one. Nearly all the brownstones had been renovated. The three-story, single-family row houses set back from the street behind their big porches and fenced yards were the centerpieces.
I looked at the address on the paper I held and then at the number on the brownstone in front of me. This is where I was going. Number 46 was tastefully renovated with a mint green fence and white exterior. The door was a deep mahogany with a brass knocker. Exactly the way I would’ve done it. The curtains were drawn but I could see light inside. I hesitated at the steps, nervous. I wondered whose house this was. Mom would never move; she loved the Convent avenue apartment, despite the memories.
I took off my shades and walked up the stairs to the porch, my heels clicking on the wooden steps. I knocked twice with the knocker. I heard footfalls on the other side of the door then it opened. My breath caught in my throat as my past caught up to my present.
He just looks at me, his eyes moving slowly over my 5 ft 10 frame. My hair is pulled back; its unruly twists piled high. His eyes travel down my chocolate brown light wool suit, the one-button jacket tightly cinched at the waist, accentuates my womanly curves, three silver chains nestles between the swell of my breasts. His gaze moves down the length of my brown woolen pants, cuffed above the high-heeled brown crocodile pumps. I can barely breath.
He is still fine, his cheekbones defined and sloping. His lips are as plump as my own but now there are a few fine lines around them. He’d shaved his head. Gone is the heavy mane of dreadlocks he’d sported 6 years ago. About 6 feet, he is still muscular, now he is also sexy. His sleeveless white silk t-shirt is tight across his chest. His jeans hanging low at his hips, barely held up by a thick leather belt, white boxers peek out from the waist. At his wrist is the thick silver bracelet I’d given him to celebrate our first year together. As I stare at him he stands there watching me. Then he steps aside and opens the door. My legs move as if on their own, as I walk inside. He closes the door.
The hall is dark, bathed only in the twilight seeping in through the open curtains. My bag is on the floor.
“It’s good to see you Nona,” he said, his voice still a rich baritone.
Then I remembered how we met, 8 years ago.
***

Cocoa colored and tattooed, his locks tied high up on his head, he’d stopped me on 125th and Lenox holding my scarf, which had fallen.
“Thanks,” I’d said, taking it, thinking he was cute. Then I continued across 125th. A few moments later I turned to see him standing next to me.
“Have I dropped something else?” I asked him.
He smiled, “No, but I’m waiting. I got all day.”
Jamal was a performance poet living on 124th near Marcus Garvey Park—not far from where Maya Angelou lives now—in one of those huge 2 bedroom apartments you could score back then for $500 a month. He’d lived Harlem almost as long as I had.
Jamal and I spent the day together, like old friends. He bought us coffee then we walked to Morningside Park and hung out, talking shit, laughing. We must’ve been lovers in another life because we had a synchronicity that was electric. We’d finish each other’s sentences and laugh at the same things. We’d look at people and arch our brows, no need for words. We knew we had something that was very rare. You could search your whole life for someone, for something like we had, and we’d found each other.
When the afternoon slipped into dusk, we went to his apartment, a huge, white space with only a bed in one room, a worktable in the other, and a massive sound system throughout. His windows faced Marcus Garvey Park. We stood there holding each other watching the sun set over Harlem. Then we spent the next two days in bed.
***

Two years ago, Jamal—Jah, as he’s known to his millions of fans—hit the big time. After laying some spoken word on one of Usher’s songs, the single went platinum and he became the next Big Thing. The Neptunes produced JahLand had gone double platinum in its first week. I’d followed his career; it wasn’t hard, he’d been in all the magazines, even in Europe. He was now making appearances on The Wire and had recorded two tracks for Oz.
Leaving me standing at the threshold, Jamal walks into the living room silhouetted by the twilight coming in from the windows. A moment later the room is bathed in a soft warm light and he is leaning against his desk, arms crossed. My eyes go to his muscular biceps. I see the snake tattoo that starts at his wrist and winds its way to his shoulder. Its twin is etched along my spine.
I almost jump when he speaks.
“Why did you leave?”
When I just stare at him, Jamal sighs loudly.
“Nona, we were in love. Remember?
He opens his arms.
“I bought this house for you. You always wanted to live in one of these.” He goes to the window. “You should have come to me. Instead you take off, and over some girl.”
He picks up a piece of paper from his desk and holds it out to me. It’s the letter I left him six years ago. I didn’t need to read it. I knew exactly what it said. How could you? I loved you. Goodbye.
“After two years, you left me a note.”
When I don’t take it he crumples the letter.
“I finally got your mother to tell me where you were last year. It took another year for her to agree to ask you to come home.”
I couldn’t believe my mother had brought me to Jamal. When I’d gone to her that day, she’d told me to trust myself. To do what I felt was right.
“Nona, why didn’t you trust me? Why did you leave?”
I took a deep breath.
“She said she was pregnant, Jah. That she was having your baby.” She let herself into your apartment. She had a key. What was there to talk about?” My mouth had gone dry.
“You thought I’d stepped out on my kid. After everything you told me about your dad. You think I’d do that? Didn’t you know me at all? He shakes his head. “She was an ex, Nona. She had a key. She’d wanted to get back together but I loved you.” Then he sighs.
Walking across the room he holds me by my shoulders. There are tears in his eyes. “But you didn’t give me a chance.” He releases my arms so abruptly I almost fall down.
He turns his back and walks away from me. A knife twists in my chest.
“What I don’t understand is why I still love you, why I can’t forget about you?” He turns back to face me. “Did you ever love me?”
My heart pounds in my chest so loudly I can barely hear my voice.
“I still love you, Jah.”

Roots and Culture
"In America, Canada and England, many West Indians grow up in houses filled with psuedo French Provincial furniture wrapped up tightly in a protective plastic skin that clings to the body in summer like a wet tongue kiss. In my West Indian family, I was definitely the apple that had fallen far from the tree. Actually, I'd fallen and rolled all the way down the hill. For me, plastic was for storing food not covering furniture. Inconceivably I was born a minimalist into a family of ceramic figurine collectors."

Read more in my Selected Works!

Luscious Jones
"I wonder if you taste as good as you look, Luv," He whispered in his rolling cockney accent. Reggie was a Brixton boy, unassuming but full of surprises, I'd met him at a Moshood fashion show: You know the scene: Niggerati and Afrocentric back-to-the-Motherland, Kente cloth-wearing types. And of course plenty of yummy muscled Homeboys, fashionistas, Mack Daddy's in full pimp gear, and music video 'hos with weaves for days on the stroll with their producer pimps."

Read more in my Selected Works!

Double Dutch
"I’d been in Amsterdam for 2 months and had decided I’d never leave. I’d fallen in love with the delicious ganga, and the even rows of sharply dressed houses pressed up tightly against each other. I loved the glittering canals and the cheery houseboats bobbing on the water, at night, lit from within like fireflies in a jar. I’d also fallen in love with the strange beauty of the Dutch people. Actually, I’d fallen in love with one Dutch in particular. His potent mix of African and Dutch blood had composed his features into an odd and wonderfully poetic juxtaposition. He had café con leché skin and nutmeg freckles. His eyes were light brown and luminescent like molten honey. His long nose was offset by thick lips and above his prominent forehead sat the biggest most gloriously kinky dirty blonde Afro I’d ever seen."

Read more in my Selected Works!

Off the Hook
Advice on Love and Lust
Featured Column

UNITED AS A PEOPLE

Dear Carol,

Hi my name is Leslie and I live on Long Island NY. I am an African American male who heard your interview on KISS FM and I have to commend you on your info regarding black men and women. I have always said to myself and others "STOP THE FIGHTING", all the sucking the teeth, the hands. The bragging: I’m a Lawyer, a Doctor etc. needs to stop and we need start looking at one another as people. You made some very good points about our problems within the race and gave some good solutions. THANK YOU!

Signed,

Leslie


For my answer read more in my Selected Works!

Brown Sugar
A Collection of Erotic Black Fiction
Read an excerpt from the book!

Brown Sugar 2
Great One Night Stands
Read an excerpt from the book!

Brown Sugar 3
When Opposites Attract
Read an excerpt from the book!