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Lydia Beaucoup and Acey Allen are 40ish, professional, best girlfriends living in Oakland who find themselves living in a desert of sexual and emotional satisfaction that many sisters will find all too familiar. One afternoon, while the two fantasize about the ideal lover over drinks, Lydia comes up with a radical solution: she proposes opening a brothel in which sexy Black men are paid to attend to the sexual needs of Black women. In Chapter 8 of Sexual Healing, Lydia describes the plan to her lover, Odell:

"Are you really serious about leaving UPS?" I ask Odell. We're sitting in my kitchen the morning after, drinking Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee and scarfing down eggs, turkey bacon, fried apples, and biscuits. After the previous night's sexathon, I'm confident we can both use the calories. Odell grins lazily.

"Why? Are you making me an offer?" he asks in a voice laden with innuendo. I can tell he's teasing, but he's not far from the truth.

"I might be. Are you?" Hey, two can play this game. Odell stops smiling, looks serious.

"Sure, if the right job comes along."

"What would you think about working for women?"

"No problem. I love women. Can't you tell?" He reaches over and playfully runs his hand up my thigh, stopping just short of the danger zone.

"What about doing work that's, er, unorthodox, shall we say?" I smile seductively.

"Actually, this gig with UPS is the blip on my screen. I've never thought of myself as the traditional type. Do you?" He grins when he says this, shovels in a mouthful of apples. I don't know if he's thinking about when I pushed him onto his back, held his hands over his head, and mounted him, or the moment I knelt on all fours and we did it doggy-style, him slapping my ass playfully and yelling "Giddy-up." Either way, traditional is not a word I'd use to describe him, even after one night together.

"You wouldn't have any problems taking orders from two sisters?"

"Now what do you think?" Odell smirks, and I grin, remembering how quickly he responded to my commands last night; harder, softer, stop, don't stop. "What's your proposition?"

"Me and my best friend Acey, we're going to open a full-service spa for sisters, and we're looking for people to work there," I say tentatively. Odell raises his eyebrows, the same ones I kissed the night before.

"I work out, but I'm not an aerobics instructor or anything like that," he laughs. "I know you told me last night I had great hands, but I'm not a certified masseuse either." Now it's my turn to laugh.

"Not a spa like that. I mean, yes, a spa like that, but much more. In addition to exercise, massage, herbal wraps, and yoga, we plan to offer other, more personalized services."

"Oh, you mean like personal training?" And because there is no delicate way to say it, and because after last night there surely shouldn't be anything sexual I couldn't say to this man, 'cause there sure ain't nothing sexual I wouldn't do with him, I cut the coy bull.

"No. I mean like sex."

"Sex?"

"You remember, S-E-X?" I spell it out. "What we've been doing for the last eight hours?" Odell's smile fades and he looks at me intently. "We plan to open a spa in Nevada, a deluxe retreat where sisters can avail themselves of the whole gamut of customary spa services, with one important addition: fantastic, orgasmic, safe sex. What I'm looking for are sex workers, men who enjoy giving women pleasure and can deliver that sexual healing to the needy masses." I spit this all out in a rush, before I can get embarrassed or intimidated and cop out.

"Sex?" Odell repeats. He says it as if he's never heard the word before, I guess because the context is so new. I laugh.

"In all its variations. Soft sex, wild sex, family style--as they say in the joint--doggy style, cunnilingus, fellatio, sex standing up, sitting down, sex in water, sex on dry land, sex with one man, two, maybe even three if a sister wants to go there. Sex with two women and a man. Whatever a woman's fantasy, as long as it's about pleasure, A Sister's Spa guarantees to make it her reality. And for a reasonable price, too."

"You're serious," he says incredulously. It is both a question and a statement. I laugh again.

"Hell, yeah, and why not? Quiet as it's kept, women are as much into pure sex as you guys, we've just been conditioned to believe that if we get it without love we're bad girls, doomed to a pathetic, lonely life, not to mention hellfire and eternal damnation."

"What about love?" Mention women and sexual freedom in the same breath and you're almost guaranteed to bring out the traditionalist in every man, even a reasonably liberated bro like Odell.

"As Tina Turner put it so well, 'What's love got to do with it?' We're selling sex with a little romance to make it go down more easily. Not love. You know as well as I do, if you're honest, that the two don't always go together. Come on, Odell, pitch me another softball." Now it's my turn to smirk. Odell looks both startled and puzzled.

"You mean sometimes women are dogging, just like men?" I can tell by the tone of his voice he wants me to say no, but as Moms always says, honesty is the best policy. I laugh.

"Absolutely. The difference is that in the everyday world, sisters have to pretend we're not just after the booty. If we don't, the odds are most men will think we're skeezers or hard-up or get turned off and run away. I mean, do you really think every woman who's interested in you is looking for a meaningful relationship? Come on. We're offering the same phat f--- without the mind games, plain and simple."

Odell looks slightly offended.

"Are you saying nice sisters, sisters like you, would pay for sex without any other involvement?" He sounds indignant. If he thinks rephrasing the same tired query is going to change my response, he's way off base.

"Hello? Odell, are you the same man I spent last night doing exactly that with? Let's break it down. You're a nice man, I'm a nice woman. We're physically attracted to each other, have a lovely dinner, laugh and talk, then come home and screw until we pass out. Am I in love with you? No, and you're not in love with me, either." He opens his mouth as if to protest, and before he can utter a word I hold up one hand like a school crossing guard when she means stop. "Let's be honest. If I never saw you again, I wouldn't sweat it. I'd remember a fabulous sexual interlude and keep on getting up, and the same's true for you. Come on, brother, open your mind."

Odell sits there chewing, not looking at me or anything else, just staring. I can almost see his brain work as he tries to wrap his mind around what I've said, as though he's flipping through his file of what he heretofore considered sexual conquests, reevaluating them in light of the stunning new information I've just laid out. It's finally dawning on him that maybe the apparent conqueror is sometimes the conquered. I concentrate on my breakfast in order to give him time to make peace with this new reality. I understand it may not be easy: revelation usually isn't. Especially when it involves letting men know that often they don't know doodleysquat about women when it comes to the game.

It isn't until I've almost finished my food and am loading that last half biscuit with apples that Odell finally says, "Lydia, let me get this straight. You're saying that all women, not just tramps, hard-ups, and nymphomaniacs, are into sex for sex's sake. Sex without dating, commitment, a future, love, and marriage?" I start to laugh, but Odell's face looks stricken.

"Look, I can't speak for all women. But I'd definitely say, at some time in their life, most. That's not to say a lot of women don't want all those other things too--love, marriage, the horse and carriage--but most of us have those in-between times."

"In-between times?"

"Yeah. When we're in-between relationships. Or when the relationship we're in isn't going well and the crisis extends to the bedroom. Hell, maybe we're just too busy at the job and don't have time for a relationship, or we're just too tired. Whatever. Most of us still would like to be able to have great sex without the drama." Odell looks at me expectantly, so I continue.

"My point is simply this: It's a sure bet that whether a sister's happily single or married, unhappily single or married, if her biological clock's ticking loudly or long since worn out, if she's divorced, or bisexual, whatever her age, whoever or whatever she is, she's into sex. And she's probably not getting enough of it. Or if she is, it may not be the way she wants it. And even if it is, she might just want to do it with someone new, no strings attached."

"Even my Moms?" Odell's voice is plaintive. Before I open my mouth, I take note of the mental signpost up ahead that reads, "Tread lightly! You are entering the familiar yet always dangerous territory of Men and their Mothers."

"Odell, I never met your mother, so I can't speak specifically about her sexual needs." Odell looks relieved. Until, that is, I say, "However," then he again tenses up. "I can say that all research indicates that both women and men want, and are capable of having, active sex lives into their geriatric years. Women, because they don't have to tackle issues of impotence as men sometimes do, are often able to be sexually active longer, since the major physiological impact of aging on women is vaginal dryness, a condition that can be addressed using a number of lubricating products on the market." I pause for breath. "So yes, older women, while maybe not your mother, still want and need sex."

I finish my spiel, and while Odell's digesting, send silent thanks to my mother, since that's actually her rap, not mine, which she delivered sternly to me in 1993, her sixty-fifth year. That's when I ran by her house one afternoon on the way home from work to borrow her cast-iron collard green pot, let myself in with my key, and busted her doing the nasty with Mr. Blanchard, her neighbor from three houses down. My father had been dead for eighteen years from a heart attack, but I was still surprised and angry. I'd thought that when she buried her husband my mother buried her sexuality with him and glided into the cold sexlessness of widowhood, after which came the grave. Boy, was I wrong.

When my mother saw me standing in the doorway of her bedroom, mouth hanging open as I watched Mr. Blanchard's slow, careful strokes, she didn't jump up guiltily or even look embarrassed, just snapped, "Lydia, didn't I always tell you to knock at a closed door? Go into the parlor and wait for me."

The wait wasn't all that short, either. I'll never know if it took that long for the two of them to disentangle and put their clothes on, or if my ornery mother simply finished what she'd started. I sat on the hard, green velvet horsehair Victorian sofa in that parlor for more than a few minutes. The more time passed, the more stupid, guilty, and embarrassed I felt, the way I did when I had messed up as a little girl and was sent to the parlor to await my parents' decision on exactly what punishment to inflict. When my mother finally arrived, neatly dressed, hair tidy and unmussed, she lit into me like a whip into a runaway slave's back. "Girl, haven't I told you to call, or at least ring the doorbell, when you decide to drop by? Well, you didn't listen, and now you've got an eyeful, haven't you, and embarrassed poor Mr. Blanchard besides. Next time, knock."

"But Momma, I didn't think--" I started to say, but my mother didn't want to hear it.

"Didn't think I was alive since your daddy died? Didn't think I have the same needs as other women, including yourself?" She peered at me hard, daring me to respond. What could I say? Even if I had thought my mother entered the land of celibacy the day Daddy died, I was clearly way off base. I didn't say a word. My mother's voice softened.

"Baby, your father was the love of my life, always will be. But that doesn't mean I don't have physical needs and desires. Your father and me made love several times a week until the day he died, had an active, healthy sex life?"

I groan as a deeply disturbing vision of my parents doing the 69 tries to unfurl in my head, mutter, "Spare me the details, mother. Please." Does my mother take me into her arms, apologize for revealing to her daughter what would better remain hidden? Not my Momma. After all, this is the woman who brought an obstetrics textbook home from the library, complete with illustrated diagrams, when I asked her where babies came from. While other children still thought it was the magic of the stork, me, I knew the graphic, bloody truth. I think I was five at the time. My mother laughs in my face and shakes her silver bouffant.

"All right, Ms. Liberated Woman, I'll spare you the details. However, let me make this point?" That's when she launches into the speech about sexuality among senior citizens, the same one I just gave Odell.

"Let me be sure I have this straight," Odell finally says. "You and your friend?"

"Acey," I interject. "Best friend."

"You plan to open a whorehouse?"

"We prefer to call it a spa," I interject.

"Where women can come and buy the sexual services of men. Women of all sizes, shapes, age, and colors?"

"Only women of color."

"No white women?"

"Nope."

"Why? Your research has found they're getting enough sex, not into sex, what?"

"We haven't studied white women, because they're not our target audience," I say snippily.

"Still, from the number of hits I get from white women, I'm sure they'd be happy to be paying customers. I mean, if sisters are gonna pay for some black dick, I'm sure white girls will, too."

"I don't doubt it," I say, unable to keep a tad of huffiness out of my voice. "But A Sister's Spa is for sisters, black women. Exclusively."

"Isn't that discrimination?" Odell's teasing, but there are few, if any jokes in this territory.

"Listen, Odell. Black folks spend most of our lives in circumstances where white people have most of the power, economic and otherwise. When it comes to white women, our history until recently--and actually, I have my questions about how much that stereotype's changed in America--has been black men as rapists and black women as mammies, although now we call them "lovers" and "au pairs." Our spa is going to be a safe space for sisters. A place for black women to be pampered, to relax, and to be adored in all our beautiful, brown diversity. A refuge. For the duration of a sister's stay, black women represent the pinnacle of desirability, the ultimate standard of beauty, the be-all and end-all. Get it? An escape from the so-called real world of white women tossing their hair, taking our men--in short, ruling the game," I don't say this, I practically spit it. Black men and white women are another sensitive subject.

"Still, a lotta those white women got cash, and I can tell you, they're horny."

"Enough," I say, and do that black people's hand-waving thing, like I'm doing air karate on a fat, slow-flying insect. "A Sister's Spa will not accept money from white women who want to come and act out their I-was-raped-by-a-big-black-buck-with-an-enormous-dick fantasies."

Sensitive black man that he is, Odell picks up on my ire, reaches over, and playfully tweaks my nipple.

"All right, cool, it's your world--and your spa. Let me say for the record that while I've slept with a few white women myself, I'm into sisters."

"Good. Because if you're not, I'm rescinding my job offer."

"You haven't made one yet," he says, pulling me back to the business at hand. "But if you want me to come work as a male ho, forget it. I'm not like that."

"Like what? Sexual? I beg to differ," I say, trying to lighten the tone, but Odell ain't having it.

"Listen, last night was great, but I don't want to screw women for a living. Maybe I come off to you as just a dumb guy who works for UPS who can screw, but don't assume that's all there is--any more than you'd want me to clock you as just another high-siddity professional sister who can't get a man and has to pick up guys at the water cooler."

"Whoa, chill. No reason to get hostile."

"Just trying to be clear," Odell says. "Sure, I like sex, but if that's all I wanted I would have married my girlfriend. I want to start a business, work for myself, make some cash, and eventually get married and have some kids, in that order. This UPS gig is just something to keep me going until I figure out how to do that."

"Odell, I'm sorry if I insulted you, really. You know you don't have to get hostile."

"I'm not hostile, just trying to be straight-up about what's going on with me. Hey, I'm a man, I like sex, but I like lots of other things, too. Contrary to the stereotype you and most sisters seem to have about us, most brothers are about something besides just getting the pussy."

"Okay, point well taken. But if you'd let me finish, you'd know I wasn't offering you a job as a 'ho,' as you put it."

"So what are you offering?"

"A career opportunity. What I want you to do is help Acey and me find brothers to work at the spa. The requirements are simple. They need to be in great physical shape, reasonably intelligent, in good health--and by that I mean disease and drug free. The majority need to be under thirty-five. We're looking for men who get off on getting a woman off. And they have to be capable of tenderness and committed to pleasuring women. Men like yourself."

"I know a lot of men who fit that bill, though I can't testify about their sexual appetites or stamina. That's not my area," he says in the voice of a proud heterosexual.

"Don't worry, me and Acey will have that area more than covered. What we can't do is find the forty men we need to hire as sex workers--that'd take too much time, energy, and beating around the bush, so to speak. That's where you come in. You're a man, you know lots of other men, and you can cut straight to the chase about exactly what the gig entails."

"So, I'd be sort of a director of recruitment?"

"And more. We'd need you to move to Nevada once we're open for business, live on site, and help make sure everything runs smoothly. I guess we could say you'd be our director of human resources."

"Which means?"

"You'd be in charge of all the male employees. Acey and I will help you identify them, but you'll train them on procedures, arrange schedules, iron out whatever problems arise, and generally ensure that this aspect of the business runs smoothly. What do you think?"

"I'd have to move to Nevada?" Odell shakes his head. "I don't know, I like the Bay Area, and my family's here."

"Odell, live a little. Nevada's kinda cool, once you get outside Vegas, and right now we're thinking the spa will be closer to Reno, anyway. Didn't you say your brothers are in school out there, too? They're making it, aren't they?" Odell sucks his teeth.

"Barely. Those three knuckleheads are always in some kind of trouble, worrying my parents half to death. Now they're on academic probation. If they flunk a course, they lose their scholarships, and there's no way Moms and Pops can afford to pay full tuition," Odell shakes his head sadly. "They're not stupid, just immature, misguided, and arrogant on top, like so many young brothers. Think they can party, never crack a book, act simple, screw women, and still get a degree. As far as the basketball team goes, they're hatchet men, plain and simple. Expendable, but they don't get it. Fools think they're gonna make the NBA, when the best they can do is get a damn degree and a life. DeJuan, DeQuan, and DeMon can't really play no ball, they're just big as hell and most players are afraid to even try to get past them," Odell laughs.

"Sounds like they could benefit from their big brother being close by."

"Yeah. I guess they could?"

"So, we've got a deal?"

"Slow down, Lydia. What about salary and benefits?" Smart man, he goes right for the money--a sensitive area since at the moment we don't have any, won't start talking to banks until we finish our business plan in a few weeks, and haven't even discussed it. I don't want to hesitate or appear unknowledgeable, since if he takes the job I'll be his boss, and it's important that even in the beginning I know, or at least make him think I know, all the answers. Keep that upper hand. I think fast.

"During the recruitment phrase, we'll pay you $100 for every man you bring to our attention and who we subsequently employ." For a moment I feel like a bidder at a twenty-first century slave auction, placing a price on the heads of black bucks, but only for a moment. It's more accurate to think of Odell as a headhunter and myself as the CEO, paying him to identify talent, whom we plan to pay very well for their services.

"To help us get the spa up and running, you'll move to Nevada. We'll give you room, board, and pay you $10,000 more than you're making now, and provide full health coverage. There'll be a doctor on site, since a major element of our sales pitch is being clean and safe."

Odell listens, rubs the place where his beard would be if he had one, and finally says, "I want a percentage."

"Excuse me?"

"A per-cen-tage. You know. Of the profits. A piece of the action, so to speak," Odell says, and rears back on the legs of my kitchen chair, hands folded behind his head.

All I can think is, well goddamn, brother, five minutes ago you were acting like the idea was crazy and I was a high sexual deviant, now you want a percentage. I guess the idea ain't so farfetched after all, huh? But I don't say that. I don't kick over his chair, either. All's fair in sex and money.

"How much?"

"Twenty-five percent."

I roll my eyes, do my best imitation of a Bette Davis scoff, and say, "Too much. Forget it."

"Fifteen."

"I hope that's not your best offer."

"Okay, ten."

"How about five percent, and a bonus for every hundred women we satisfactorily service? Kind of a management by incentive program."

"Seven and a half percent, and a bonus for every fifty women and another one if I bring in conventions."

"Six." Cute and sexy as he is, the brother's shrewd. Frankly, Acey and me hadn't even thought of convention business. I can see vans packed with Deltas, AKAs, and union members pulling up to the spa. If Odell works as hard for us as he does negotiating for himself, we can't lose.

"Cool," Odell says.

"Welcome to A Sister's Spa," I say, smile, and extend my hand. I look into his eyes as we shake. Now that breakfast's eaten and the deal is done, I'm getting that early Sunday morning, sleepy, let's go back to bed feeling. I'm just about to suggest it when the doorbell rings. Before I can even wonder who it can be, I remember: Acey. Sunday. I finally got tired of her nagging and told her I'd go to church with her. I whisper to Odell to put on some clothes and hurry to buzz her up, coming up with excuses as I go.

Intrigued? Pick up Sexual Healing at your local bookstore or find out more at Agate Publishing. Or meet Jill and get a signed copy at our Gala and Book Signing Party at the Nia Enterprises Leadership Summit on June 9 in Chicago (Call 312-222-0943 to buy Gala tickets).

And come back here in June for our Sexual Healing quiz.

Jill Nelson's first novel, Sexual Healing (Agate Publishing, $23.95), is available in bookstores now. Her column On the Verge appears semimonthly on NiaOnline

Published on: 06/02/2003

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