Chapter 1: Volume 4

Whether it worked or not, I tried it.

The first guy to make it through all of the red tape seemed to be okay. He had an amazing smile, according to his pictures on the website, and his body was, well, um, um, um!

Okay, I have to admit it, a man with a nice body. A guy with a well-taken-care-of body.

Don't get me started!

We talked and laughed on the phone for hours, but he could never replace you. Instead of the playful bantering we once engaged in, he liked to use sexual humor. I didn't like it, but, to talk to someone, especially someone fine, I tolerated it. However, one day I had to tell him that it bothered me.

I was talking about one of the guys who made it through to the phone call portion of the process, but offended me during our first conversation:

"Well, I was a little offended by a guy talkin' to me about what he was gonna do to me and it was the first time I had talked to him on the phone. I mean, come on, tellin' me about how he would make sweet love to me. How can a man make love to someone he's not in love with? Besides, I had already told him I was done with the sex thing and that I wouldn't do it until I get married.

"...if I got in there, everybody would know I'd been in it. I have ta leave my mark all up in that! You'd be tellin' everybody I was yo daddy [laughing hysterically]"

Even though I knew that was his way of joking, I didn't like it.

"You know MADUNIQUE, I'd really like to tell you somethin' that's bothering me" I stated reluctantly.

"What's that?"

"I don't like it when you say stuff like that."

"Like what?"

"Tallkin' about havin sex with me when I already told you I wasn't interested in that."

"Well, that's the way I am! I keep tellin' people that I joke about sex, but I don't mean anything by it."

"Okay, I understand that, but I'm asking you not to do it with me because it makes me feel uncomfortable."

"Alright, if it offends you, I won't do it anymore. I don't want to offend you."

Sooner or later I knew he and I would have to meet; it was inevitable...so I thought. However, each time he was in town and every time he was ready to meet, I was doing something important and we couldn't.

I began to think: Maybe he's not who I think he is. Maybe he's not that extremely attractive guy in the photos on the website.

As time continued on, I realized we would never meet. It just wasn't gonna happen.

I remember the day it dawned on me that he either wasn't what I thought he was, or he just wasn't interested in me...not even a little bit.

I asked him, "Why haven't we met yet?"

"We just keep missing each other"

"I think it's more than that"

"It's not"

"Sometimes I think you're either in a relationship, or you're not interested in me."

"Why would you say that"

"Because, even when we've arranged something, you never seem to come through. So, either you're with someone, and that's completely ok, or I'm just not important enough for you to make the time to see me.

"Well, I'm not in a relationship"

"Okay, I see...Wow. So, I'm not important enough?"

"You said that, I never said that."

"So, what is it?"

"I don't know"

"Are you the same guy in the pictures?"

"Yep"

"And that's not your cousin in the photos?"

[laughing] "Nooooo! I wouldn't do anything like that."

"Oh, okay. Well, let me go ahead and fix my children dinner. I'll talk to you later"

"Alright"

As we said our good-byes and disconnected our conversation, two things happened: I decided to stop trying to see him and an overwhelming sense of solitude and isolation fell on me. All of a sudden I felt a flushing all over my body. My heart began to race; it palpitated. I could barely breathe. I wasn't there. I stopped to be where my mind took me.

I remembered you saying "You're a whole-lot of woman to love." I tried to hypothesize your meaning. I analyzed it at that moment. I had no idea what you meant, so my mind went back to what a man said to me almost three years before I met you:

For three weeks I knew something was going on. I was begging, "Please tell me who you're seeing. I know you're seeing someone. Be honest with me! I just know it. I can feel it!"

For three weeks he remained dead silent, but I knew he just didn't want to tell me. The cost was too great. I did too much for him and I thought he was afraid of the unknown. Would she do the same things I did?

I remember the night I spent there before my final interview in Burlington. I looked at the comforter sets, mattresses, the queen-sized bed and the countless other things I bought for him.

His wife had left him right before I met him and he was sleeping on the floor with two mattresses that smelled like cigarette smoke. Mix-matched pillows, pillow cases, sheets and bedspreads. Nothing matched. She had pulled a moving truck up to his house while he was spending Thanksgiving with his family (out of town) and emptied the house out.

I had never bought anything for a man. I just didn't do that, but there was something about this man. He made me feel so free and it felt like he loved me. It didn't take long before I spent my entire tax return trying to help him with lawyer payments.

Out of all of the things I gave to him, I gave my holiness away. I gave up my avocation of teaching dance. I stopped reaching out and up and I only reached to him...that was my fault as well as my biggest mistake and regret. I gave him my soul. It was tied to him like I had never been tied to any man. I was both entangled and ensnared...nearly to distruction.

I even gave him the one thing I vowed to never give a man...my orgasm.

I had never had one.

Thirty-three years old and I had never allowed myself to have one with a man. I could make myself have one, but I had never had one with a man.

It was the source of my power. Being raped multiple times had taken away any physical power I had over what people did to my body. I couldn't make the men stop. They had permission and they raped me at will dripping salty sweat in my eyes and squirting disgusting semen in my face...some of them even urinated on me. The smells! So many smells that today I have to remind myself:

You're not there anymore. No one can do that to you anymore.

Oh, the many times I found a spot on the ceiling to crawl  around as they contorted my young body like an unbaked soft pretzel. They made me limber. I had to be flexible. They would break my legs if it were necessary to get me in the position they wanted me in....at times I couldn't breathe. It was beyond horrible! I seemingly had no power and many of them laughed at me, so I wouldn't dare shed a tear to entertain them!

After being molested and raped so many years, I learned my own body. I spent plenty of time with my body parts learning how to please myself...and...I learned how to turn my orgasm on and off. I learned how to make my body wet without having an orgasm. I learned to move my body to speed of the process of their orgasm so they could get off of me.

I did it so well. Sex...the accolades of men were what caused me to take on my vixen role. It was a role I never wanted to play, but life cast me as the harlot and I played the role for as long as life insisted upon casting me in it.

I thought he was different. He didn't know as much as I knew sexually, but he said he didn't want me to show him because he didn't want to see me that way.

I did what I could to please him, then I began to trust him. I wanted to trust someone. I wanted to see what it felt like to get one from a man. I wanted to see if it was different from giving one to myself.

One day, after we had went out and had a nice time, I had decided I would give it to him. I didn't tell him. As we began, I remembered thinking: How am I going to do this? I don't even know how to do this with a man. Then, I thought about what worked when I was alone: Relax...Relax, Yolanda, he won't hurt you.

He began to please me and I let myself go.

I DID IT! I thought

I did it, I did it, I did it!

...and boy was I unable to control myself. After that, I just let myself go every time with him. Man, it was good to have one of those.

BUT

Who would've known I would give my present to someone who didn't see himself as a gift? Who would've thought I would give my orgasm to a man who was going around giving other women orgasms?

I wasn't special...I was convenient.

At that moment, all I could think about was how I was there to console him as she portrayed him as a terrible husband. She was so evil and he was such a pitiful victim. As I looked around his house and saw all of the things I had purchased and I saw how he didn't want to spend time with me. He didn't want to have sex with me anymore. He couldn't even look me in the face...I knew something was wrong.

He no longer wanted my gift.

He denied it every time I asked, but somehow, I knew he was lying. He was with someone else.

Finally, as we arrived to my final interview for a teaching position that I strongly desired at a school where I knew I could learn a lot about teaching.

He turned to me and looked me in the face and said:

"Maybe I don't want to be with you anymore. Maybe I want to be with ..."

That same feeling came over me...the flushing...I'm sure I was red I felt tears coming, but I just couldn't bring myself to cry.

WHY?!

Why would you do this before I go into my interview?...Why didn't you just tell me when I asked you?

I walked into my interview with my head held high. I had done it before. Growing up, I had always done it. I'd cry alone because no one deserved the satisfactions of seeing me knocked down.

Fighting tears, feeling embarrassed, knowing I had be unjustly disrespected and dishonored. I was dying. The one thing I had that I was saving for my future husband...I had given away and I couldn't get it back

I rocked the interview and came out with a start date, but I still had to ride 45 minutes with him after he had given me that horrific news.

All of this came to mind. The trip back to Durham...feeling that rejection. Knowing that I didn't mean anything to him. Understanding that my tears would mean nothing. Feeling dirty and knowing that I couldn't even cleanse myself with my tears.They meant nothing to the men that raped me, they meant nothing to my mother when I asked her to stop letting them, they meant nothing to my family when I asked them to take me in...get me out of that house...please...somebody's gonna kill me!

Nobody ever listened to me. Nobody ever wanted me.

When we got back to the house, his house, I begged him to fight me. I humiliated myself.

"Wrestle with me! wrestle me!" I beseeched him.

In my mind I was really saying Touch me, please touch me, love me, give it back to me. Give my love back to me.

He couldn't...He had already thrown it away.

Just like you did.