Brown Sugar 4 [Paperback]

Carol Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Series: Brown Sugar | Publication Date: February 1, 2005

Continuing in the bestselling Brown Sugar tradition, this fourth installment brings together the finest award-winning and critically celebrated up-and-coming African-American writers contributing sexy, scintillating, never-before-published short stories.

Editorial Reviews

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Introduction

The Blacker the Berry, the Sweeter the Juice

I'd been in Amsterdam for two months and had decided I'd never leave. I'd fallen in love with the narrow rows of sharply dressed houses pressed up tightly against each other. I loved the strange combination of orderliness and casualness that pervaded the city, and the glittering canals and the cheery houseboats bobbing on the water, lit from within like fireflies in a jar. I even loved the screeching seagulls flying in packs over the canals, playing tag and bodysurfing on the sparkling water.

In the early morning with the mists shrouding the canals that ring the city it is easy to see why Amsterdam is known as the "Venice of the north." Although the streets change their name every block, the city is compact and easy to get around by foot, bike, tram, and even boat. Buildings are rarely higher than four stories, so there's always plenty of light and sky.

I'd fallen in love with a society that allowed for freedom of choice, late-night culture, and the right to simply be, no matter your race or background. I was in love with the Dutch people, who seemed to enjoy life the most and feel the least guilty about its pleasures. Actually, I'd fallen in love with one Dutch in particular.

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.

So here I was at Odeon, the grooviest bar in Central Amsterdam, curled up on a comfy couch with D'Angelo's lyrics flowing out of the speakers, "Brown Sugar Babe, I gets high off your love and don't know how to behave..." and my fingers entwined with Malcolm's.

We'd drawn a crowd of stares on the dance floor, where we'd danced till we were drenched in sweat and funky. We'd pressed up tight against each other, bumping and grinding our way into the early morning. The humidity had frizzed my hair into a halo of kinky curls, my lipstick was smudged, the rest of my makeup was gone, my white T-shirt was transparent from sweat, and I didn't care. Laughing, Malcolm wrapped his big arms around me and fit my hips into his, matching his tempo to mine.

This was not a man I'd ever thought I would be attracted to, could not have anything in common with, but we connected in every sense. We had many of the same interests -- we liked the same music and loved dance, art, and books. We'd even talked about our color, the prejudices we'd encountered because of it. I'd thought things were bad for me in New York, but some of Malcolm's stories of growing up an only child of mixed race in a small, all-white industrial town on the outskirts of Holland made me rethink my Brooklyn childhood. He certainly hadn't grown up privileged because of his color, nor did he feel that way. His father was often away on trips to Africa. His mother, though she loved him dearly, simply didn't know how to celebrate his blackness, or even understand the West African dialect his father had taught him. He told me of how he'd yearned to move to New York, where people looked like him and he could feel a kinship with other blacks, where he wouldn't stand out so much because of his looks or always feel as if he didn't belong.

As he spoke I tried to grasp what it would feel like to not understand your blackness. Not to feel a part of a community of people, to understand the language, the gestures, the unspoken things that connect us without us even knowing. And for once I felt as though I belonged, no matter my color. I felt like part of a culture, and a people.

When we stumble out the door the cold air makes me shiver as we walk to our bicycles locked up along the canal on the Prinsengracht. It's early enough for a faint rosy light to start to brighten the eastern sky.

Standing in his bedroom, the shower steaming up the bathroom, I watch Malcolm undress. He has broad shoulders and a strong back, and his oversized shirt had been hiding thick arms and a strong ass. His skin is so light I can see the intricate pathways of bluish green veins beneath it. His nipples, which are the color of melted caramel, are the darkest things on his body. He is lighter than any man I've ever been with.

He drops his shirt to the floor and steps out of his jeans. Naked, his legs are slim and sweetly bowed. His chest is wide, and curly blond hairs, barely discernible against his bronzed skin, taper down to his stomach. Malcolm watches me watch him. He smiles as he comes toward me, then whispers, "Your turn."

He pulls my T-shirt over my head. He grips my arms, pressing me into his chest. His hands move up to my hair. Tangling his fingers in my kinky curls, he pulls my head back and exposes my throat, kissing a moist, hot trail from my chin down to my neck. He bites me there, then his tongue explores my throat. He moves down to my collarbone and kisses his way to the center of my chest, breathes in my scent, then exhales deeply. I can feel his smile against my skin. He turns me around and pulls my skirt to my ankles, then slips my panties down to join it.

I hear him pull up a chair and sit behind me. I feel his hands on my hips tracing the geography of my flesh. Caressing the curve of my ass, he grips my hips in his palms and kneads them. He turns me slowly around and breathes a sigh into the dark hairs nearly invis...

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Washington Square Press; Original edition (February 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074346687X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743466875
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,820,330 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Job, February 11, 2005

By 

Haitianlover (Tallahassee, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brown Sugar 4 (Paperback)

As far as secret desires are concerned, this one has it all: black/white; Haitian/Dominican (great story!); kissing cousins; loving lesbians; porn stars and eye doctors; ex-boyfriends; ghosts; and a fourth story by my old professor, Preston L. Allen, which features the brother-in-law/sister-in-law front seat of the truck romance between Pam and Johnny from "Nadine's Husband." Carol Taylor has done it once again. Excellent, excellent, excellent choices. I am still a purist, so I still rank Erotique Noire at the top of my list of all time greatest erotica anthologies (black or white); however, with the publication of Brown Sugar 4, I beg to make an amendment. If I consider the series as a whole, then the Brown Sugar books rank # 1 and Erotique Noire falls to # 2--especially when the stories in this latest installment (#4) are taken into consideration.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sharing Secret Desires, January 30, 2005

By 

The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers (RAWSISTAZ.com and BlackBookReviews.net) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brown Sugar 4 (Paperback)

What is your biggest sexual fantasy? Would you share it with someone else? Or is it a secret held tight within the recesses of your dreams? In BROWN SUGAR 4: Secret Desires, Carol Taylor has assembled an impressive list of award-winning authors and mixed in others on the verge of their literary careers. These authors share their own versions of secret desires in this collection of erotic stories, the fourth and final installment in the Brown Sugar anthologies.

In reading erotica, one must first define the term and then realize the definition varies per individual. Though I didn't find many of the stories overly erotic, they were well-written and captured a range of writing styles crossing the spectrum from literary to street to almost poetic. Some showcased forbidden desires such as the preacher's wife, a family member's spouse, and even a lover outside of marriage. Others touched on moving friendship to an intimate level and stories of crossing race and social status boundaries established by parents or society.

My favorite story was Brandon Massey's "Ghostwriter" in which a horror writer visits a cemetery for inspiration after suffering through writer's block. I loved the originality, unpredictability, and subtleness of the story. A few others I enjoyed were Gar Anthony Haywood's "Where He's Getting it Now," "A Tale of Two Cities" written by jessica Care moore, and "My Brother's Wife" by asha bandele. I've never read works by any of these authors, but look forward to doing so.

While reading BROWN SUGAR 4, I was more drawn to the actual writing of the contributors. Most of the stories were more appealing to the literary lover in me and less to the sensual side hiding in my fantasies. I was, however, pleased to see romance and sensuality displayed instead of graphic sex. Yet, I was a bit shocked by some of the stories which crossed the border of being morally wrong as it pertains to my own beliefs. In spite of this, it was easy for me to fall back on one small thing: in most cases, secret desires remain a secret and may or may not be thought of as unobtainable, unacceptable, or simply unapproachable because we're afraid of the outcome.

Though a bit odd for a collection, the introduction actually stood out more than any of the stories. It was easy to see the passion Ms. Taylor has for her work on the Brown Sugar books and her writing itself is sensual, crisp, and poetic. And, though this is the end of her Brown Sugar series, I look forward to one day reading a collection of her writing and commend her on gathering together a medley of authors to showcase their individual styles of writing.

Reviewed by Tee C. Royal
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

2.0 out of 5 stars Overrated, September 1, 2008

By 

Book Princess (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brown Sugar 4 (Paperback)

This book makes the fourth one in the series that I have read. And the series continues to decline. I was hoping that the Brown Sugar books would get better along the way, but this is not the case.

Although, Secret Desires is well written, I didn't find enough of the stories to be highly erotic and entertaining. If more stories that hold the readers attention would become a part of the Brown Sugar series, then it would make for a more pleasurable reading.