Message from a Mistress

by Niobia Bryant

  That means you take eighty single women, put them all in one room, and there is only one eligible man available—with “eligible” meaning that he is breathing.

  Yeah, one to eighty…Daunting statistics, right? And that is without taking into account the man’s personality, looks, education, sexual preferences, personal hygiene, financial status, mental health, and credit rating.

  If you want to figure all those aforementioned things into the equation, then the statistic goes from one to eighty, and shoots up to around one in a million.

  Since we can’t all be lesbians, what usually happens is that discernment goes out the window, giving rise to the phenomenon known as interfacial dating. You’ve seen them—they’re everywhere. Gorgeous women with less than attractive men, and she’s trying to pass him off like he’s Boris Kodjoe instead of the Elephant Man.

  “Eva,” they say, “meet my new boyfriend, John. Isn’t he handsome?”

  “Ummm, what’s wrong with his head?”

  “Oh, that’s just a little swelling. It’ll go down…. He’s eligible, you know.”

  Yeah, believe me, I know!

  Daniel was the last “eligible” guy I dated. We met at a cocktail party in Chelsea, and got along fine for a few months until it started to dawn on me that he was a compulsive and habitual liar. One day he was James Bond, and the next day he was The Crocodile Hunter. Daniel claimed to be an international operative for the CIA, and had all these fantastic, swashbuckling tales of being on safari in Botswana and being attacked by a pack of rabid hyenas. And before Daniel was Dexter? Oh, he was real “eligible.” He also had the distinction of being the brokest real estate agent I had ever met, because every time I turned around he was always hitting me up for money and expecting me to pay for everything whenever we went out. Then the break-ins started. At the time, I lived in Fort Greene, in what I thought was a safe neighborhood. I had never had any problems before, but within three months of meeting Dexter, my apartment had been burglarized on four separate occasions.

  Now, I may not be a member of Mensa, but I put two and two together very…well.

  “It’s your own fault,” Kyle had told me. “This is New York City. Girl, you can’t just be picking up strangers all willy-nilly…. I thought I taught you better than that!”

  So, yeah, the vibe that night at the Gotham party was all wrong. Ten minutes into it, I was ret-ta-go.

  “About face!” I said to Kyle, looking for the nearest trash can to throw my catalog into.

  “Uhn-un, Eva, I paid too much money to get up in here and I’m not leaving until I find out which one of these guys isn’t playing it straight.”

  “There you go again, searching for the gay needles in the haystack,” I said. “Believe it or not, Kyle, every other man you see is not gay.”

  “Humph! Honey, you don’t know what I know…,” Kyle said as he gazed around the room sizing up the other men with his queer eye.

  I sighed. Since Kyle was my ride and he was hell bent on staying, I figured I might as well look around, too. It didn’t take long before my eyes settled on one of the few black bachelors in attendance.

  He had virile good looks that reminded me of a young Harry Belafonte, even down to the tall, slender build. Unlike some of the other bachelors in the room, he did not appear to be trying too hard to be suave and cool. Instead, there was an expensive gentleman vibe about him, which he exuded effortlessly. In other words, he had swagger for days!

  Kyle spotted the guy at the same time I did.

  “Hottie at six o’clock!” Kyle said, frantically flipping through his catalog in search of the man’s photo and profile. Once Kyle found what he was looking for, we both inhaled sharply at the same time. In the picture as in real life, the man was insanely handsome and meticulously well-groomed.

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “Donovan J. Dorsey…,” Kyle said dreamily. “It says here that he graduated magna cum laude from Morehouse and received a business degree from Columbia—come on, let’s go make his acquaintance.”

  Kyle grabbed my hand and led the way through the crowd of women who surrounded Donovan J. Dorsey.

  As it turns out, Kyle was gay, but Donovan Dorsey was straight like Indian hair.

  Kyle was disappointed when Donovan failed to set off his gaydar, but was gracious enough to introduce me and Donovan without missing a beat.

  Before meeting Donovan, I had never believed in love at first sight. Lust, certainly. However, when Donovan and I shook hands, sparks flew, and there was a current of chemistry between us that was so strong, it felt like I had been struck by a lightning bolt.

  A few nights later we had our first date at Da Silvano, an intimate Italian restaurant in the West Village, where we shared a bottle of crisp pink wine and a four-course dinner for two, that started with a hot antipasto and ended with tiramisu.

  Over candlelight, we filled each other in on our life stories and plans for the future. He told me how rough he’d had it growing up in Queens with just his younger sister and hardworking single mother. And I told him about being abandoned by both parents and then raised by my God-fearing maternal grandmother, Juanita Cantrell, whom I affectionately called Grandma Nita.

  We were so relaxed with each other that our conversation flowed as easily as if it were our one-hundredth date instead of our first.

  We were on the same page when it came to ideals and sensibilities, which is why I was completely open and vulnerable with Donovan as I gave him all the details of how I’d put myself through college and, soon after graduation, packed up and moved to NYC, where I moved in with Kyle, and subsequently landed the job as beauty editor at Flirt.

  “And here you are,” he’d said, and smiled, reaching across the table to caress my hand. “Lucky me.”

  Donovan and I were so fascinated with each other that three hours had passed before either of us realized it. And even then, we only noticed the time because the server had delivered the check without being asked for it, which was another way of saying, “Come on, I’m working for tips here! Go get a room, already, so I can seat another party!”

  After that first date, we went out almost every night.

  Seven years my senior, Donovan was the worldliest man I had ever met. He lived an extraordinary lifestyle, and was a connoisseur of all things luxurious. As I would come to find out, he especially had an insatiable taste for fine art, and we began frequenting auctions together, where more often than not, he walked away the highest bidder.

  For me, Donovan’s discriminating taste was a huge part of his charm. It is also what made me feel so privileged just to be around him. Here was this man who expected and demanded the best of everything; he could have any woman in the world, yet, he’d chosen me.

  Prior to meeting me, Donovan had been a notorious playboy. I mean, after all, he was one of the city’s most eligible bachelors, so my sudden appearance in his life did not automatically stop other women from coming at him. But as our relationship deepened, all of the other women fell to the wayside, one by one, and before either of us knew it, I was the last woman standing.

  And just like that—*finger snap*—I entered into a platinum-dipped VIP lifestyle that took me to hot spots around the world, including Dubai, Saint-Tropez, Costa Rica, and most of the faraway places I had fantasized about when I was a little girl.

  Nothing I wanted was off limits, and when Flirt folded overnight without a word of warning, Donovan insisted that it was the perfect time for me to give up the lease on my Fort Greene apartment and move in with him. And the real kicker was that as far as he was concerned, I didn’t have to work.

  Wait a minute—WHAT!!?

  I don’t care how much of a feminist you are, I don’t believe that there are too many women out there who don’t want to hear those words, or who would turn a man down when he said them.

  Consciously or subconsciously, aren’t we all searching for a man who has the ways and the means to swoop in and save us? Whether you call him
a sugar daddy, a sponsor, a knight in shining armor, your husband, or Captain Save a Ho, it’s all one and the same.

  For me, the very thought of being taken care of was in itself a page out of a fairy tale, but at the same time, I was anything but a lazy woman. Ever since I was fourteen years old I had always kept some type of employment, no matter how menial the labor, or how small the pay.

  I wasn’t 100 percent comfortable with the thought of being dependent on Donovan for financial security, so I took up freelancing, even though the jobs were few and far between.

  In the meantime, I found other ways to fill my days, like workouts with a personal trainer, lunch dates with the girls, beauty maintenance appointments, committee meetings, and galas for some foundation or another.

  Oh, and shopping.

  For the first time in my life, price tags became a nonis-sue, and I began shopping so hard that it became a sport for me.

  It was a wonderful life. One I could get used to, and most certainly did.

  DAFINA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2010 by Niobia Bryant

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  ISBN: 978-0-7582-5741-3