Blackgentlemen.com

by Zane

  From:SmoovAFROrican@Pries.com

  To:ABabaloa@JazzCityBank.net

  Re:You Have Some Kind of Nerve

  Akinyele, I was delighted to see that I struck a nerve! I knew that there was much to discover beneath that hard, shiny exterior. See, I too was once too dark and too chunky to be considered attractive. I know what you have been through because I was there myself. As for the challenge? You’re on! By the way, which branch of Jazz City Bank are you at?

  Ohhh! A die hard! Pulling out the keyboard, Akinyele began her latest reply.

  From: ABabaloa@Jazzcitybank.net

  To: SmoovAFROrican@Pries.com

  Subject: Oh yeah???

  All right. So you’re up for the challenge, huh? Well one more thing…you seem to be forgetting that you are in Savannah and I am in New Orleans…Long distance relationships are fine but this sistah has some needs that AT&T doesn’t reach out far enough to touch……. A. And by the way, I am located in the St. Charles Street tower.

  Akinyele sat sipping her lukewarm coffee until her computer’s sound card sang again. This time, her heart skipped a few beats as she hit refresh.

  From:SmoovAFROrican@Pries.com

  To:ABabaloa@JazzCitybank.net

  Re: Oh Yeah???

  My dear, in case you didn’t know…at least ten planes leave both of our cities headed to the other every day. I have nothing but time and frequent flyer miles!

  Clicking save, she closed his last email and drew a long breath. His words sounded so serious! Getting up to pour herself another cup of coffee, she tried to weigh out the pros and cons of a long distance relationship. The last one she had been involved in began in her senior year of high school when her boyfriend decided on to go to Grambling instead of one of New Orleans’ numerous colleges. When the semester started, it was kind of fun hitting the road to see someone that you cared about. But the boring four hour drive through Louisiana’s dull Kisatchie forest soon had her disenchanted. Of course she was older now, but she was basically the same person. If she couldn’t handle four hours, how could she potentially handle ten or twelve hours of driving?

  The minute that Akinyele’s car was visible in the parking tower, she broke into a run. Pressing the unlock button on her keyless remote, she jumped into her car and headed home. Navigating through the awful five o’clock New Orleans traffic, she couldn’t wait to get there.

  Savannah was on EST, an entire hour ahead of New Orleans. This pretty much meant that by the time she straggled into her Pontchartrain Park condo and kicked off her kidskin pumps, Nakalem was probably already relaxing and sipping on a mint julep, or whatever the hell they drank in Savannah.

  Pulling up in her parking space, Akinyele sprang from her car and went inside. As Frankie Beverly and Maze sang, this was the golden time of the day. She began to strip in the doorway and didn’t stop until she was down to her underwear. Slipping on a raw silk kimono, she retraced her steps downstairs and retrieved the assorted items of clothing that she had discarded on her way in.

  Picking up her the remote for her stereo, Akinyele clicked the power button on. As Sade began to sing about faith, trust, and hope, she turned on her computer and allowed it to warm up. She walked into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of Merlot, and grabbed some Carr crackers, Stilton cheese, and red grapes. Bringing her bounty back to the computer, she signed on and squealed when she saw that Nakalem was logged onto America Online.

  Okay, Akinyele…why are you getting excited about another human using the computer at the same time as you? she asked herself. And a human that you have never met! Geez!

  “Oh shut up!” Akinyele said out loud to that damned inner voice. Crunching noisily on a cracker, she typed away in the instant messenger box.

  It was delightful, sitting there and type/talking about anything and everything. She was learning more and more about this person who was halfway across the country without either of them even saying a word.

  SmooveAFROrican: Hey…my fingers are getting tired…can I call you?

  OnlyOneAkineyle: I don’t care..that’s cool…

  SmooveAFROrican: #?????

  OnlyOneAkineyle: 504-555-1809

  SmooveAFROrican: Ok.. give me five minutes.

  OnlyOneAkineyle: Can you give me twenty?? I have to jump in the shower…I signed on as soon as I walked in from work.

  SmooveAFROrican: Cool…twenty minutes then.

  Clicking on save before closing the instant messenger box, Akinyele shut down the computer and ran upstairs. Drenching her hair with good-smelling shampoo from Carol’s Daughter, she stood under the warm spray and scrubbed away at her dense, natural hair. Putting on a pair of bath gloves, she scoured away at her already soft skin and thought about Nakalem.

  Nakalem seemed to be everything that she could want in a man yet she had never met him, had never even heard his voice. During the course of their America Online conversation, Nakalem told her that he had friends. Geez, she hated that word! That normally meant that he had a serious woman who would wait in the wings while he got his freak on with whomever he chose. Then, after the smoke cleared, she would still be his main thing. Akinyele wasn’t settling for anything like that. If she couldn’t have her own man, or a man who had the potential to be only her man, then she didn’t want any at all. If she wanted some quick and easy satisfaction, she had several losers that she could call to satisfy her. However, that was no longer acceptable in her world. Dicks, although few and far between, had to come with intellectual conversation and class. If they didn’t, then fine because she had a dick in the dresser with four brand new batteries.

  Basically, it boiled down to this. Although she felt like she and Nakalem were doing a decent job of getting to know each other online, he was really going to have to tap dance and jump through fiery hoops if he wanted to be with her. She was lonely, but she still felt the need to stick to her guns. In her mind, she was almost sure that he wouldn’t be willing to.

  She was sitting at her vanity, thinking of ways she could make him prove himself when her phone started ringing. Running over to the nightstand, she checked the Caller ID, saw the area code, and guessed that it was Nakalem.

  “Hello?” she said in her sexiest voice.

  “We have a very important message for you concerning your water softener,” a plastic Caucasian female voice began.

  “Oh, shove it where you need it most!” Akinyele screamed into the phone before slamming it down. She felt tricked!

  Glancing at the clock on her bedside table, she noted that it had been more than twenty minutes since she’d logged off the computer. In fact, it had been more than thirty. Just when she was about to give up and turn her ringer off for the night, the phone rang.

  “No, I don’t want to buy anything. Get a real job,” she answered. Geez! She was even more pitiful than she thought! The only people that she could get to call her were telemarketers.

  “Whoa!” the deep voice at the other end of the line chuckled out. “I was not planning on trying to sell you anything, but now I feel the need to warn everyone else in this world of your wrath! How are you? This is Nakalem.”

  Instantly embarrassed, Akinyele just stood with the phone next to her ear and twirled a lock of hair with her free hand.

  “You were quite vocal a few seconds ago and now the cat has your tongue?” Nakalem jeered.

  “Oh no, I am here. Just surprised that you actually called,” Akinyele admitted.

  “You? The most placid diva herself?” he asked in a serious tone.

  “Wait a minute. Have I ever told you that I was a placid diva?”

  “You never said it,” Nakalem replied with laughter in his voice.

  “Great. Well, we shall get along fine if you drop these assumptions from the beginning,” Akinyele stated, hoping he would realize how serious she was.

  “Akinyele, please allow me to call you right back,” Nakalem said and promptly hung up.

  “Oh hell no!” she screamed to the room around her. Gettin
g no response from the walls and ceilings, she decided to scream again. “Who the hell does this Black Negro think he is?”

  The shrill ring of the telephone answered her this time.

  “Hello?” she said with fire in her voice. If this was a telemarketer, they were going to get it.

  “Hello. Might I please confabulate with Akinyele?” Nakalem’s voice poured out like liquid fudge.

  “This is she. You should know that. You just hung up on me.”

  “Not I. The person who hung up on you was a person on his way to making a bad first impression on you. The person calling now is he, the same person yet better and more knowledgeable. So how are you tonight?” Nakalem asked.

  “I am fine,” Akinyele said with a smile. She could tell already that he was an expert at tap dancing.

  “That’s good to hear. First of all, let me say this. I am not in the habit of calling women that I meet over the internet,” he explained.

  “I am sure you say that to all the women on your buddy list,” she said, only half-joking.

  “Actually, of all of the females that have responded to my ad, you are the only one to be graced with a call from me.”

  She wanted to believe him. Although Iris and Nadya had told her about the good men available online, they had also hipped her to the internet players and the online whores.

  “Okay. Answer this question. What made you decide to call me?” Akinyele asked.

  “I knew from the moment I saw your response to my ad that we would be having this conversation,” Nakalem began. “Most of the responses sounded desperate. Needy. Frantic. You were caustic. You made it seem like you didn’t care whether or not I responded. Like you weren’t in the least bit pressed.”

  Walking over to her vanity, Akinyele looked into the mirror and observed the prominent grin across her face. Yep, she was hard to get and he knew it. She baited the line and he bit. Now, he was playing on her turf.

  “That’s probably because I am not pressed,” she said with confidence crowding her voice.

  “So I guess you would not be too pressed to fly to Savannah next Friday?”

  “I…I…,” she stammered. “I don’t even know you!”

  “That’s the point of this call and those emails and all of the future calls. Getting to know you and you getting to know me,” Nakalem explained.

  “Okay. But what if I still don’t know you by next Friday?” she challenged.

  “Then you’ll go home Friday afternoon and we’ll have a nice conversation over the phone and continue our getting to know you process,” he said logically.

  “Okay, you just gave me an offer that I cannot refuse,” she admitted.

  “Great. So…tell me about Akinyele,” Nakalem said.

  “Okay…I am…” she began.

  “No,” he interrupted. “I want to know about the real Akinyele. Not the corporate raider who has the world by the balls.”

  Akinyele was about to object when she decided to just break down and tell him all about her. She never let anyone know the real, real her and he seemed to be up for the challenge. Fine, he wanted to know, she would tell him and watch him run for the hills.

  She talked. And he talked. And they both talked. She explained how good it made her feel to go to a mall knowing that she could pretty much buy anything in any store without any regrets because she was the only person that she had to look out for. He told her how people sometimes padded their surroundings with material items to fill voids in their personal lives. He told her how much he loved his job and making money but often had dreadful dreams of growing old alone. She told him that she knew exactly what he was talking about. She told him how rejecting men who she felt weren’t up to par made her feel like she was in control. He told her how rejecting perfectly innocent people for no good reason often made us feel better but just added to the scar tissue left by those who had once rejected us. She told him how the Wonder Woman role got tired and how, just once, she wanted Superman to come to her rescue. She also told him how good it felt to pull up next to a car full of African-American men who wouldn’t have given her a second look a few years earlier but were now salivating over her new, improved, fly persona knowing that they could never have her. She hated admitting these things to anyone, especially herself. But he asked. And he added. He told her how it felt good to be an African-American man who had made it and was still in the ever-changing process of making it. He told her how it felt to be desired by women because of his capabilities. He told her about being passed up by single women time and time again because they had found the fabled one better. She told him how it felt to be on top of the world in public and then in the pits once you got home, locked the door, and took off the power suit.

  Looking at the clock, Akinyele was shocked to see that they had been talking for four hours. True, they’d talked about anything and everything but it felt like minutes instead of hours.

  “Geez, can you believe that we’ve been on the phone for four hours?” she asked.

  “Not at all. It feels like we’ve been talking for minutes but knowing each other for a lifetime,” Nakalem said in a serious tone.

  “Well…I don’t know what to say,” Akinyele said. She was truly at a loss for words.

  “Say goodnight and I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he said.

  “Good night, Nakalem…. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Good night, Akinyele, and thank you.”

  “Thank you for what?” she asked.

  “Thank you for being you and opening up and allowing me to talk to the real you.”

  “Okay…I still don’t know what to say.”

  “Good night, Akinyele,” he said. “Good night.”

  Chapter Five

  IT JUST HAPPENED…

  Akinyele’s room looked like Saigon after the fall of Vietnam. Clothes were strewn everywhere. Personal items spilled out of her Kenneth Cole train case. Shoes were stuffed inside of a shoe bag that she had no intention of bringing with her to Savannah. An open Reaction suitcase sat amongst the mess, empty and confused.

  Her plane was scheduled to leave Moisant/New Orleans International airport in an hour and a half and she still wasn’t packed. Geez! She was the same woman who had wowed the locals in Madagascar and was pursued by every man she came across in Lagos. She had globetrotted in the best and most appropriate rags all over the world yet she didn’t know what to bring on a simple trip to Georgia.

  She and Nakalem had been getting to know each other over the past two weeks and although the visit seemed slightly rushed, she was excited. Apprehension played no part in her visit. She was ready to meet him. She wanted to see if Nakalem in person matched Nakalem the personality. She wanted to like him and she wanted him to like her. She was never one to want for approval, but Nakalem was different. A little part of her actually wanted him to really like her. Actually, a huge part of her wanted him to like her. Although she really wanted him to be wowed by her, Akinyele knew that the best she could do was to be herself.

  Selecting five warm weather outfits, a pair of jeans, a windsuit, and a light sweater from the closet, she folded them neatly into the suitcase. This was what she was taking. She walked to the dresser and selected the matching hosiery and underwear along with a few fiery pieces of lingerie just in case he liked her a whole lot. Teasing was her bag! Closing the latch on the suitcase, she sprinted around the room gathering accessories and toiletries. Well, Akinyele, she told herself. This is it…sink or swim.

  “Soft drink? Cocktail?” the blonde flight attendant asked Akinyele as she pulled out the folding lap tray and placed a small bag of honey-roasted peanuts in front of her.

  “I’ll have a ginger ale,” Akinyele replied as she went back to reading the Essence that she had purchased in the airport newsstand. “On second thought, let me get a Stoli on the rocks,” she said as she remembered that first-class passengers were entitled to the drink of their choice.

  “Coming right up,” the flight attendant replied
as she walked to the rear of the first class section.

  Getting sauced wasn’t going to diminish her anxiety completely, but at least a good strong drink would pacify the butterflies.

  “Thank you,” Akinyele told her as the flight attendant politely handed her the drink and moved to the passenger behind her.

  After downing the Stoli at a record speed, she took out a moistened towelette and wiped off her lipstick. She was starving and the nuts looked appetizing, but the last thing she wanted to greet Nakalem with was protein breath. Instead, she took out a few Altoids and munched away noisily on them. Opening the mirror of the train case that she had stored in the overhead compartment, she went to work on repairing her already perfect makeup. Satisfied, she fluffed out her already fluffy seven-inch natural. When the pilot announced that they were making their descent into Savannah, Akinyele doused herself with Happy and said a quick prayer. She was going to have a good time on this visit regardless of whether he liked her or not. She needed a getaway from New Orleans, even if it was just for one weekend. The worst-case scenario was that she would return home on Sunday night with a new platonic friend and she could definitely deal with that.

  Her feet ached as she made her way into the airport through the tunnel leading from the plane. Why had she chosen couture over comfort? The four-inch heels on the Enzo sandals dug into her newly pedicured feet so hard that she thought they would leave a permanent impression. Akinyele wanted Nakalem to be knocked out by her appearance but now it seemed like a limp would mar everything anyway.

  She was so busy concentrating on each painful step and not stumbling over onto her face that she didn’t even realize that a very warm, very fragrant body was embracing her.

  “It’s so good to see you, Girl,” a delicious voice said as her cheek rubbed against his chest.