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Fear, confusion, panic . . . all those emotions and more overcame Jacinda Montenegro in a horrifying instant. She was frozen to the spot where she sat; she couldn’t move. She felt paralyzed, unable to budge, incapable of moving a muscle. Her eyes searched the room looking for something that might help her get out of her predicament, something that could rescue her from her dilemma. Finally, with little other option, she cried out, “HELLLPPPPP! Help me! HELP!”

Khari Brevins, her boyfriend of two months, heard Jacinda’s cries from his comfortable position on the sofa in his basement, two floors away. He had been chilling in his man cave all by his lonesome; watching some college ball and eating a bacon cheeseburger fresh off the grill, some store bought potato salad he had doctored up to give it some taste, and drinking a few bottles of imported ale to quench his testosterone-driven thirst. He jumped up and bound up the stairs two and three at a time. Breathless, he reached the top of the staircase on the second floor of his house and made his way cautiously to the master bedroom. The slight sound of his bare feet on the hardwood floors in the hallway seemed to echo throughout the house as he crept along. Not wanting to make too much noise; he approached the bedroom with caution.

“HONEY! Help,” Jacinda cried out again, at the top of her lungs.

Entering the bedroom, Khari was expecting to see a blood bath of dismembered body pieces. Seeing nothing, he made his way further into the room. The bathroom door was ajar. He scanned the room quickly, looking for something that he might use as a makeshift weapon to defend himself but couldn’t find anything other than a pair of Jordans he had kicked off in the heat of passion the previous night and they wouldn’t work against a crazed serial killer, not even in a pinch. Disoriented momentarily, adrenaline taking over, Khari made his way across the room. He could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. Summoning up all his courage, his fist clenched tightly, he stepped into the doorway to discover what sort of gruesome crime scene would lie before him.

“Oh, you’re here. Good,” Jacinda sighed. “You’re out of toilet paper. Can you get me some? I was getting ready to use your shower curtain to wipe my behind.” Seeing the humor in the situation, she burst out laughing. Based upon Jacinda’s wide-eyed, innocent, and dazzling smile, it was clearly evident that she had no clue that her screams for help might have been even a tiny bit on the melodramatic side. Backing out of the room and breathing a sigh of relief, Khari went to the linen closet in the hallway and grabbed three rolls of two-ply cushiony, quilted softness and returned to the scene of the crime so to speak.

“Here,” he said, standing in the door frame with his back towards Jacinda, trying to hand her the rolls of TP with his hand stretched precariously behind him.

“Uhmmm, I can’t reach, silly. I didn’t poop, ya know. It was only pee. You can come in. Would you just hand it to me, please?”

“Jeez, Jay, do you always have to be so graphic?” Exasperated, Khari closed his eyes and tip-toed into the bathroom like he was a little boy trying to pretend he was invisible, put the rolls of toilet paper down on the counter, and made a quick exit back to his basketball, burger, and brew.

Jacinda joined him about a half hour later, smelling like she had bathed and lotioned herself with every tropical fruit known to man, carrying a plate with a hoagie the size of the state of Connecticut in one hand and an orange-cream soda in the other. She had spent the morning in bed sleeping and relaxing while Khari was up and about doing his Saturday morning chores. This was their first real time together since they had woken up. “What’s the score?” Jacinda inquired.

Khari glanced over and all she was wearing was a pair of black bikini panties, not a stitch of other clothing. He practically spit his Samuel Smith Organic Lager across the room. “Uhhhmm, don’t you want to put some clothes on? I mean, it’s 2 in the afternoon.” Because they hadn’t been dating very long, this was the first time they had a date that didn’t end with one of them getting up and getting dressed in the middle of the night to go home. This was their very first intentional sleepover, complete with a packed bag and everything. It was clear that Jacinda was comfortable in her own skin, much more so than Khari could ever hope to be. For a brief moment, Jacinda felt embarrassed. In her own home, she’d walked around buck naked in front of Khari but, again, they had only been having sex for a couple of weeks so they hadn’t quite worked out all the logistics of coupledom just yet.

Jacinda felt ashamed; tears welled in her eyes. This was the first time in the 8 weeks that they had been dating that Khari wasn’t totally attentive and sweet. She thought her lack of clothing indicated that she was comfortable in his home but it was clear he didn’t want her to feel that relaxed. She jumped up, ran upstairs to get dressed, and returned a few minutes later wearing black leggings and a hot pink t-shirt. She even put on socks and shoes just to be on the safe side. She made her way back to the sofa and sat in silence as she ate her sub and watched the game. Khari sat in silence and watched the game, not even bothering to make small talk or look in her direction. He could tell that she was upset but he just didn’t care. When Jacinda said she was going to leave to go home, he made no efforts to ask her why or even ask her to stay. He cleared the dirty dishes and asked her if she needed help taking her bag to the car like she was an unwelcomed house guest who had stayed too long.

Khari, at 37 years of age, worked as an installer for a cable company. If anyone were to ask him to describe himself, he would emphatically say that he was a good guy with his own house, his own car, no criminal record, and no k**s. He made a fairly decent salary but if it wasn’t for the fact that Khari had gotten into a car accident and received a settlement of $60,000 he wouldn’t have been able to put a down payment on a house and buy his truck. In fact, if he hadn’t gotten that lump sum, he more than likely would have been living with his mother in her basement. He liked to live for the moment and saving and budgeting had never been skills he had mastered so he blew the rest of the money on partying and ladies.

As for the ladies, Khari was a liar and a cheater extraordinaire who treated women like objects. He had never, not once in his life, had a girlfriend he hadn’t cheated on. He didn’t even think that was a problem or an issue, it never even crossed his mind that anything was wrong with that fact. The only person he thought of in relationships was himself, women were a nuisance because he really only wanted sex and he resented having to pretend to care about someone else and their feelings, but that’s what he did, pretend. He was great at pretending when he wanted to; his acting skills could have won him an Academy award. Khari had the ability to convince women that he was attentive, loving, committed, faithful, and oh so in love, right up until the minute he decided he was bored of pretending then he would move on, no explanation, no looking back. When he was in a relationship and his self-centered urges hit, he would do something, anything to fuck up the relationship and he would gravitate back to the collection of mentally-unstable women he kept on retainer who he had romanced in the past and who found his particular brand of emotional immaturity sexy and who didn’t ask too many questions to ascertain his level of fidelity. Or at least they believed his lies enough to be swept up in the romance of it all.

Standing at 5’9”, 180 lbs, naturally fit, built like a Pit-bull, with flawless caramel-colored brown skin and a smile that could light up any room, Khari was neither ugly nor overly attractive. His most “attractive” feature was that he knew how to pour on the charm to get women to fall in love with him. The romantic emails, the late night phone calls, the dinners and the endless lies were his weapons of choice. It was especially the phone calls in the beginning of the relationship that lasted hours and hours where he would tell the women how amazing, wonderful, and intense the connection he felt to them and that would usually be enough to seal the deal and make them fall in love. After they fell head over heels, the phone calls would last 20 minutes and he always had something more important to do than talk on the phone. You see, Khari was addicted to the chase. When he caught his prey, he would find someone else to romance. When the women whose hearts he had destroyed would confront him, angry and hurt, he would ignore them like they didn’t even exist, blame them for some made up excuse, and he would take no responsibility whatsoever for his actions without a thought or care in the world. Khari was totally oblivious of how heinous it was to make a woman fall in love with him and then just snatch it away.

Jacinda, on the other hand, was a case-study in growth, evolution, and transformation. She had gone through her 20s depending on her looks. It’s what Black women who are attractive do. You use your looks, your big butt, and, if you’re “lucky,” your light skin to get men to do everything for you without you needing to have a thought or a care in the world about being self-sufficient or independent. She dressed well, was relatively smart, and standing at 5’5” tall, 160 pounds, possessing more than her fair share of tits and ass, there was no shortage of men vying for her attention and willing to buy her things to impress her. That meant men fell all over her just for the chance to have her on their arm when they were out and about town but ultimately, their only true goal was to get her into bed. She wasn’t a real person to most of them, just a sexual conquest. She was more like an erotic game piece to be collected by men in some twisted competition to see who could screw the most attractive women.

Jacinda had gone through her 30s dependent on books, immersing herself in self-help books, workshops, seminars, and retreats in an effort to unpack a little bit of the baggage so many Black women carry around with them that had been keeping her from knowing real joy. She was way past the “buy me” stage and wanted men to value her for more than her looks, but for her substance. She didn’t want to hold onto past pain to the point where she exploded in violent anger at the tiniest provocation. She didn’t want to feel like she was constantly walking around with a cloud of insecurity and self-doubt hovering over her. Her 30s was her time of reinvention and renewal.

In her 40s, Jacinda was the top in her field of cooks. She’d quit her job as a bank manager and she’d gone to culinary school and gotten a job as a food stylist on a TV network. It was great because she could express her creativity with what she loved doing the most and she didn’t have the dreadful schedule of a restaurant chef. She finally had gotten comfortable in her own skin. Everything wasn’t all peaches and cream, however, because it seemed that she was so anxious to love and be loved, not to grow old alone, she would jumped into relationships where the warning signs were there and she found herself overlooking some major character flaws in men and giving too much weight to chemistry and not enough weight to character. She didn’t date thugs, she dated emotionally immature men. It wasn’t a preference it was just a reality that Black men hardly ever did any work on themselves and they had been raised in a society that told them that their manhood was to be measured in inches and machismo.

She figured that if she could just find a good enough man who was committed to her, she could help shape him into a great man with love and guidance. It didn’t seem all that unreasonable to her. No relationship is perfect; Prince Charming only exists in fairy tales. She was doing what she thought was her only choice, to accept what her mother, sisters, grandmother, aunts, and a whole host of elder Black women had been telling her since she was a c***d. Men, they said, were never going to be sensitive, nurturing, or understanding so if she didn’t want to spend her life alone, she needed to just suck it up and deal with it. It was that advice that landed her in a string of dead-end relationships.

After their little incident, Jacinda let a few days go by, hoping Khari would call her and apologize for the incident, or at least acknowledge that he should have been a bit less rude and a bit more sensitive. That call never came. Her mind raced, her thoughts would spin out of control. She couldn’t figure out what happened to the man who had come to fix her cable and blown her away with his sensitivity and attentiveness. She saw his postings on Facebook; simultaneously she planned and plotted on what and when to post on her Facebook page so that he would see them and he could be reminded of her presence. Finally, tired of the c***dish games, she picked up the phone and called him. He was emotionally distant. She addressed the issue head on, he told her that she was over-reacting and that he hadn’t done anything wrong. Khari never apologized. He just glossed over that part as if he didn’t owe her anything and he acted as if he did nothing wrong. Much to Jacinda’s credit, it was her efforts at communicating her feelings without projecting shame that turned the tide in the conversation and before long; things were back on a good footing.

The weeks turned to months and they were getting along better all the time. The relationship had a few problems, nothing to break up over, and for the most part they were going extremely well. Khari’s brothers had been teasing him about settling down and finding someone rather than just the endless string of women that only lasted two or three months so Khari decided that Jacinda was nice enough that he would try to make it work with her. The relationship really started to blossom when he made that choice. There was very little fighting, they got along well, they enjoyed the same forms of entertainment and social activities and the sex was . . . very, very good.

The sex between them wasn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination; Khari made sure Jacinda came every time. Jacinda just like felt the sex was monotonous, lacked any sort of creativity. A typical evening would be spent having dinner, watching TV, and when Khari decided that he was tired enough to go to bed and not too tired for sex, they would shut everything down and head to the bedroom. Khari always wore a t-shirt and boxers to bed and the lights out always had to be out. Their routine was entirely predictable. Jacinda would get in bed, usually naked or wearing something semi-sexy, and Khari would follow soon thereafter. He would start rubbing his dick on her ass and playing with her breasts and talking dirty. That would go on for about 15 minutes until he thought she was sufficiently aroused and then would slide his boxers off and climb on top of her under the covers and “do his business” as Miss Celie would say.

Technically, Khari was masterful at throwing the dick. His dick got super-hard, he lasted long, he had a phenomenal down stroke, and he knew how to seal the deal. The only thing missing for Jacinda was diversity. He never once sucked a toe, he never gave her a massage, they barely even kissed. Every once in a while they would augment their evening with a little oral sex but Khari wanted to use sex more as an aide to get to sleep rather than an actual intimate connection with the woman with whom he shared his life. Jacinda wanted more sensuality, more passion, more variety but Khari always had an excuse for why it had to be pretty much the same way all the time. He was tired, he had to get up early, he had other things on his mind, everything was an excuse for him not to do anything other than exactly what he wanted to do. Eventually, Khari got to the point where he could silence Jacinda’s complaints about sex by saying, “Babe, I’m so in love with you, I need you. Sex with you is amazing. You are all the woman I need.”

And those were all the words she needed to hear. The sex wasn’t bad so Jacinda thought it was her responsibility to be a little more accepting of what was good about the sex and conversely try to gently suggest other things they could do together. Most other women would have been satisfied with a good, hard fuck but Jacinda wanted to incorporate toys, she wanted to try different scenarios and techniques, she wanted to have spontaneous sex at 4 in the afternoon in the shower or the kitchen or the park. She would have settled for him just being more tactile in bed. Anything would have been an improvement but she weighed the pros and cons of their relationship and decided it wasn’t a deal breaker. Lying, cheating, doing something intentionally hurtful, those were deal breakers and she was assured Khari loved her and that was worth more to her than playing some silly erotic board game, a hot stone massage, or using chocolate body paints.

On the night of their one-year anniversary, Khari took Jacinda to their favorite restaurant. They sat across the table from one another and gazed into each other’s eyes, they flirted and talked and fed each other. Love was in the air. Khari realized that this was the longest, healthiest relationship he’d ever been in. He was caught up in it, thinking that he had really changed, that he was no longer a player but he was really, truly a good guy. He was starting to believe his own lies. He started to pour on the charm. “Over this last year, Jay, I’ve grown so much. You’ve helped me to be a better human being, and dare I say it, a better man. I am so comfortable with you. I can easily see myself spending the rest of my life with you.”

When he heard the words come out of his mouth, something instantly changed within him. Never stuttering for a second, while he was still professing his undying love, his mind was racing with thoughts that he wanted to end the relationship and end it immediately. He knew he had gone too far. Khari didn’t want to spend the rest of his life with anyone. What he wanted was to fuck as many random women as he could, no strings attached, and never have to pretend to care about another woman for as long as he lived. Fuck what his family had been saying. He had gotten so masterful at lying, at pretending to be the sweet, sensitive boyfriend that he almost started to believe his own hype. The minute he heard himself say that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Jacinda, it was like being struck by lightning. He knew that he HAD to get out of the relationship and fast. He knew that he couldn’t keep pretending to love her. He wanted to be as self-centered and narcissistic as he could be. He didn’t mind pretending to be into women if they were just fuck buddies and booty calls and married women who had husbands to go home to but telling a woman that he wanted to spend his life with her, he had gone too far and the game had to stop.

Even as he was sitting there, even as he heard his professions of love in his little prepared speech leave his lips, he was planning his exit. He was holding her hand, softly touching her cheek, and telling her things that every woman would want to hear and he was lying the entire time. He knew in that very moment that the next time that she brought up an issue about their relationship, he would blow it out of proportion and give her no choice but to break up. He thought about cheating on her and letting her find out but that was Plan B. Technically, he had cheated on her before but it but he justified in his mind that it didn’t really count because it was only oral from some chick at his job he didn’t give a fuck about anyway. He knew Jacinda; he knew that it wouldn’t be long before she wanted to talk about “the truth” or feelings or how to make their relationship better, or something about relationship stuff. It was just a matter of time.

That time came before he knew it. When they got back to her apartment, they settled down to watch TV as usual. Jacinda had been overwhelmed by his professions of love. She knew they had been getting closer, that the relationship was getting stronger and stronger with each passing day, week, and month, but she hadn’t expected him to start talking about a future together. He had always been so adamant about not wanting anything long-term. She was happy, for the first time in her life, she felt like, “This is it, this is my happily ever after.” The relationship wasn’t perfect, the disparity in emotional maturity was offset by the ease, fluidity, and comfort they shared in so many other aspects of their partnership, but it was, or so she thought, healthy and happy and stable and just perfect for her. She figured it was the ideal night to talk about the lack of seduction and variety in their sex lives again. In her mind, he had taken a huge step towards her and it was really a game changer in their relationship. She chose her words carefully. Tentatively, she said, “Khari, I need to ask you a question.”

“What?” he responded, his voice dripping with defensiveness, preparing himself for the showdown.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about us, well, about you know, about our sex. I was just wondering if . . .” She hesitated. She wanted to be as gentle as possible. There was never going to be an easy time to bring up the topic but she took a deep breath and decided that if they really were going to spend the rest of their lives together that they had to have this discussion. “It seems like you have never feel comfortable being naked around me unless we are having sex. You aren’t even comfortable with me being naked unless we are having sex. I was wondering if . . .”

“Just say it,” he said, pretending to be growing frustrated and annoyed with her stalling but really not caring one way or the other what she was about to say. Whatever she said, he was going to turn it into a reason to break up.

Jacinda summoned up the courage to ask the necessary questions. “Well, I was wondering,” she said in her sweetest voice possible, “I have been thinking about all the women in your past. And I’ve tried to make sense of the patterns in your life. Do you think the reason why you are so uncomfortable with being naked around me, and the reason why you seem to enjoy more of a wham, bam thank you ma’am is, I was thinking maybe the reason you aren’t so comfortable with exploring our sexuality more is . . . maybe because you . . . you know . . . aren’t . . . well, truly comfortable with your . . .” She took a deep breath. “Black men are perceived to be well-endowed and I was wondering if you might feel a bit uncomfortable because . . .”

Before she could even finish her thoughts, Khari yelled, “DA FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!?!?” He jumped up and stormed across the room, staring out the window into the dark urban street 14 floors below. “You trying to say my dick ain’t big enough for you? Trust me, I have never had anyone complain. I got plenty of women who want to get down with me. Way hotter women than you, in fact.” Jacinda’s word cut him like a knife. He was hurt, truly hurt, and he was trying to hurt her back. This wasn’t part of his master plan, this was the real deal. “So what, I don’t have a foot of dick between my legs. I still blow your back out,” he added.

Jacinda ran to his side, tried to reassure him that she wasn’t complaining, that she wasn’t trying to hurt his feelings, she just wanted to be open and honest and discuss what might be behind the reason he was so unwilling to explore their sexuality more.

The truth was Khari had been ashamed of the size of his dick since his earliest memories of knowing what sex was. He was on a little league team when he was 11 and he was the only Black boy on the team. In the showers after a game one day, one of the boys started making fun of him, pointing at his penis and saying how it wasn’t big like Black guys were supposed to have, telling him he wasn’t really Black. His dick wasn’t smaller than any of the other boys on the team, it just wasn’t hanging to his knees either and they made sure to remind him of it every chance they got. They told him that he would never get a white girl with his little dick; they said that he must have slave master blood in him because he didn’t have a big, black cock like the other brothers in the hood. It didn’t really matter that none of them had even been to the hood or seen another Black penis in real life. They were basing their comments on the interracial porn stashed in their father’s porn collections. Khari never told anyone. He never told his parents, he never told the coach, he never told his friends or a girlfriend. He couldn’t bring himself to say the words that they were making fun of him because his dick was average. In his mind, they were saying, your dick is too small and he carried that pain with him deeply.

As Khari got older to the age when everyone was experimenting with sex, he was afraid to approach girls. Senior prom, he got up the nerve and asked a young lady to the prom. After the prom, they got a hotel room with a bunch of other k**s, some alcohol, and they were off to make memories. Immediately upon completion, his heart racing and his mind full of doubts and insecurities, he asked her how it was for her. Her response was to be etched in his subconscious forever. “Well, I thought it was going to be different. You know, all my friends said it would hurt but it didn’t. I thought it was going to be . . . better.”

With those words, she sealed Khari’s fate. From that moment on, he decided that if any girl showed an interest in him, he would pretend to be in love with her so that if and when it got to the point of having sex, she wouldn’t complain that he wasn’t some super-hung Mandingo. It was his insurance policy. He didn’t care who showed him attention, fat, ugly, younger, older, married, dating, nothing in common, he didn’t care if she had slept with every man in a 50 mile radius, as long as she showed an interest in him, he would say whatever he had to say in order to get them to be infatuated with him so he could fuck her. He didn’t realize that he all of the pretending that he was in love was unnecessary, that most of the girls would have slept with him regardless. He never realized that his dick wasn’t too small at all, it was average. But having an average-sized dick for Black men is often times a source of shame.

When he got to college, he made sure to never shower or undress in front of anyone, not roommates, not girlfriends, especially not anyone on the baseball team. At the first opportunity, he got an apartment by himself off campus. The only time he got naked in life was to shower and to have sex. He never even looked at himself naked in the mirror. Did he equate any of that with his insecurity about his dick size? Not once. Never having made any conscious connection between what happened to him when he was on the little league team and his behaviors with women for the last 25 years, the only thing Khari knew in that moment was that he was angry with Jacinda and he didn’t need an excuse to end the relationship, she had nailed the coffin shut herself.

Khari calmly denied her accusations and stood there, stoic and outraged, in silence, ignoring Jacinda like she didn’t even exist. Jacinda was crying hysterically, trying to calm Khari down, reason with him. She was falling all over herself, apologizing. It hadn’t come out at all like she had wanted. She wanted to reassure him that he was more than big enough for her, that she was satisfied with the relationship and the sex; she had made a stupid attempt at bringing up a subject that most Black men are terrified to talk about. Kicking herself, Jacinda knew she had made a huge mistake. She knew Khari wasn’t the sort of man who would ask himself the hard questions. She knew that whenever it came to bringing up any issue where he would have to reveal something about himself that was ugly or painful, that he would react negatively and deny, deny, deny.

“I’m out. I’m not going to do this anymore.” With that, Khari grabbed his jacket and walked past Jacinda like she wasn’t even there.

“Wait, where are you going?” Sobbing uncontrollably, Jacinda pleaded. “Stay, we can talk about this. I’m sorry. Babe, we had a wonderful evening. We love each other. We’re going to spend the rest of our lives together. We can work through this. I will admit I wasn’t as sensitive about the issue as I should have been. Let’s talk, this is a misunderstanding, let’s not ruin the evening. Sweetie, I am so very sorry. Please don’t go!”

Khari made sure to shut down any hopes of working things out as he put his hand on the front door. Without even looking back, he mumbled, “I don’t want to be in a relationship with you. I didn’t really love you. It was all a lie,” as he shut the door behind him to the unhinged and irrational screams of Jacinda behind him.

Jacinda cried for weeks. She sent texts, emails, cards, she made phone call after phone call, all of which were ignored. She sent links to articles about penis size and a woman’s pleasure, explaining in detail that bigger does not mean better. She sent diagrams showing that a woman’s g-spot is located about 2 inches inside a woman’s vagina and that even an average sized dick is more than sufficient to give a woman a vaginal orgasm. She could have sent Dr. Oz himself to say that Khari’s dick was more than big enough and he wouldn’t have cared one iota. Khari was too emotionally immature to email or call Jacinda back so he just let her keep emailing and texting him until she eventually got the message. He had erased her out of his life like she didn’t exist. In his world, anyone who made him face his insecurities was dead to him. Unable to wrap her head around the fact that she was in what she thought was the happiest relationship of her life one minute, and literally, an hour later, it was gone, Jacinda struggled with depression, anger, confusion, loneliness, and a sense of betrayal for months.

Over on the other side of town, Khari struggled with no such conflict. They broke up on a Wednesday, he was fucking another woman by Saturday, and it would have been Friday but he had plans with his co-workers after work that night. Within weeks, he had a different woman for every night of the week to play with and manipulate. Most were women from his past he could call up and manipulate easily, newer women required more time and finesse to seduce but he was up for the challenge. He was single and had not ties to anyone. He would have tried to romance the homeless girl who sat on the bus stop all day if he thought she would give him some. Before work, during work, after work, all night long, he was trying to romance someone to get them in bed. He felt no compunction using them, degrading them, taking out his anger and frustration on them sexually.

Truthfully, it wasn’t anger and frustration Khari felt, it was insecurity and fear. He heard Jacinda’s words over and over again in his head every time it came time for “that moment” when he had to undress in front of a woman. He hated her for making him feel like that little boy being shamed in the locker room, like the young man on prom night all over again; memories he had intentionally shut out. If there was one thing in life that Khari had prided himself on was making women infatuated with him to stroke his ego. He became so terrified someone was going to tell him that his dick was little that he began to overcompensate by doing his level best to hit it, stab it, kill it, to brutally and savagely fuck every woman he could. And the women ate it up. They showed up in the middle of the night or 5 AM in the morning, they were at his beck and call whenever he needed to silence the voices in his head. He loved the dysfunction and the drama. He loved lying to women, convincing them that they were the only one when they were one of so many, he couldn’t keep track of them all. They didn’t seem to want to know or care about other women in his life, they just seemed grateful for the emails, phone calls, dinners, concerts, and the good dick.

For the better part of a year, Khari was on a sexual rampage; a slave to his dick. He was sticking it in anything and everything without a care for disease, pregnancy, common sense, or standards. Sex was his d**g of choice and he was self-medicating and numbing his feelings of insecurity in all aspects of his life, demons he had never faced, with women he manipulated into bed. He wanted and needed to sexually dominate them, to slap, choke, degrade, and humiliate them in order to feel good about himself. And because they loved it, each and every one of them ate it up in fact, and came back for more whenever he told them, he felt high off the adrenaline.

Everything came crashing to a halt one day when, before work, he was overwhelmed with emails from all the women in his current rotation of fuck buddies that he composed an erotic story and sent it to all of them, which wasn’t unusual or uncommon. This particular morning however, in a rush, he accidentally didn’t BCC them and by noon, his phone was blowing up with calls and texts from a half a dozen women all wanting answers. They started emailing each other, confirming times, dates, and commonalities in seduction. They all started to piece together that the restaurant that was “their special restaurant” wasn’t so special and that he took all of them there. They started to figure out that in far too many instances, when one woman left in the morning, there was something else there that same night. And they all figured out that there hadn’t been a condom used between all of them.

Two of the women had a modicum of self-esteem, cursed him out, and walked away. Three of the women believed him when he said that it was all a contrived plot by a nameless ex-girlfriend who had hacked his e-mail and made up the other email addresses to cause drama. They “sort of” questioned his sincerity but they were just as addicted to his level of dysfunction, lying, and hot sex as he was to the adrenaline rush of manipulating them into being infatuated with him so they simply chose to ignore the obvious truth and keep on with the way things were. One of the women however was never really mentally-stable in the first place, and while she was sweet and oh so pleasant as long as she was in the dark, she became a psychotic lunatic intent on exacting painful revenge after finding out the truth. She stalked him, she called him night and day, she showed up at his job unexpectedly; she was intent on making him pay and pay dearly.

One would think that at damn near 40, Khari would have learned that pretending someone doesn’t exist, ignoring them like the emotional pain he had caused them meant nothing, is really only appropriate if you are 7 years old and you are ignoring your imaginary friend. But ignore he did and he paid the price for it. Had he simply faced his victim with a bit of humility and remorse, if he hadn’t acted like she meant nothing to him and that her pain was insignificant to him, he could have saved himself a world of trouble. But Khari was arrogant and stupid. For every email that she sent him that went unanswered, for every text he deleted, for every phone call from her he rejected, he sent her into a fuming rage, infuriated that her voice wasn’t being heard, her pain wasn’t worth addressing.

Treating women like disposable game pieces and ignoring the pain he caused them was a lesson he would learn with near fatal consequences. As he pulled into his garage one night, lowered the door, and grabbed his bags of groceries, the sensation hit him quickly. At first, it was warm, then, almost instantly, it became a burning sensation. He couldn’t breathe. It was surreal. He reached around to his side and felt the warmth. He held his hand up and could see the blood, but it was almost like it wasn’t his own. Crumpled to the floor, he managed to call 911 just before he passed out.

Had she stabbed him an inch to the left, she would have punctured a lung and Khari would have died instantly. Talk about a close call. As he recuperated in the hospital, Khari thought it was almost comical. “I damn near lost my life over some pussy.” But it wasn’t pussy that almost got him killed; it was the heart of the woman who was attached to that pussy that he should have never fucked with. Even after a woman had played sushi chef with his insides, he still wasn’t willing to acknowledge that he had done anything wrong. He couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that it had even happened to him. Things like this weren’t supposed to happen to him. For all of his lies and manipulations, he was so great at lying, he’d avoided any drama like this up until this point. He was the guy that women loved, not hated. The physician at the hospital, hearing bits and pieces of the story and able to figure out pretty much the rest of it, recommended therapy for Khari and he vehemently refused. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with him and he certainly didn’t want to change. He liked being “free and independent” as he called it, meaning, egotistical and self-absorbed.

In the months following the stabbing, there was a trial. The young lady was convicted but she brought out the infamous email and all the women were called to the stand to testify. Khari’s family, hell, everyone in the city learned all about the type of man Khari really was because it was the opening story on the local news for weeks. He distanced himself from his loved ones and friends even though they still supported him but he was ashamed of his actions and just wanted to hide out in his basement and sit in front of the TV.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch as they say, in the weeks following the trial, Khari found that his libido had started coming back and his need for sex was returning. Only problem was, he was afraid to initiate sex with anyone. Khari was sure that every woman in the world knew of his womanizing ways and that the next time one of them got close to him they were going to try to cut off his dick rather than stab him in the back. He would never admit it to anyone but he was even more afraid after the stabbing that women were going to ridicule him for having a little dick if he didn’t lie to them and convince them that he was in love with them. Therein was the root of his conundrum. He was terrified of lying to women to get sex but he felt like he had to lie to get sex. He had a six inch scar to remind him of what lying had gotten him in life.

Isolated from friends and family, with no one to talk to, and most importantly, feeling like he had no opportunities for sex unless he moved to east Mozambique, he pulled out the card for the ther****t he had been given and made an appointment. It was the last thing he wanted to do and he didn’t even think it would help. The only thing that made him keep the appointment was the vague memory of Jacinda and how she had said that maybe, just maybe, that his need to use women was tied to his concept of manhood. Something about that had resonated with him. He’d gone to counseling before and it didn’t work because he, obviously, lied the entire time. He planned on lying this time as well. He just wanted a quick fix, some magic pill that would allow him to get back to fucking women again.

For the first three months, Khari lied so much that he couldn’t keep track of the lies. His ther****t was a man and not distracted by or attracted to him so he would call out the lies and they would have to start over from scratch. Finally, lonely, isolated, scared, horny, and hating himself, Khari started to tell the truth. It started spilling out. He talked about the boys on the baseball team and how he pretended to his buddies that he had a big dick in order to feel validated. He spoke of the women in his life he had hurt, his compulsion to use women, what makes him feel good about slapping women and degrading them during sex. He opened Pandora’s Box and he started telling the truth like his life depended on it.

For the first time in his life he realized how deep the rabbit hole went. All the lying we did to women wasn’t compartmentalized to just them. He became aware for the first time in his life that his Casanova ways meant that he was lying to everyone in his life. He had to lie to his parents, his brothers, his friends, his co-workers, more importantly to himself to cover up his addiction to sex and women. For the very first time in his life, Khari realized how there was no place in his life where the lies didn’t consume him.

For months, he did nothing but talk, the doctor barely asked questions, barely offered advice. Finally, Khari literally got to the end. He had purged himself of all of his guilt and lies, and confessions and revelations. Everything was out in the open. He was waiting to be fixed. That was the point of therapy and he was waiting for the doc to tell him to read a book and take a pill and he could go back to the way he was without the fear. He was growing anxious. He hadn’t had sex in a months and he felt like he was going to die. Feeling anxious, he pushed the ther****t to make a diagnosis and write a prescription for his anxiety.

The doctor casually said, “Khari, there really isn’t much I’m going to be able to tell you that will convince you not to lie. You’ve built your life on falsehoods, deceptions, manipulations, and lies and you aren’t going to change. I’ve never encountered a more pathological liar than you in all my years of practice. The only thing that can really help you now is if you stop lying to yourself and I can’t imagine that happening because you are still not taking responsibility for yourself and the impact your lies have on other people.”

Khari was more than slightly irritated. “What the hell? You mean to tell me I’ve wasted 5 months of my life coming here every week spilling my guts and you are sitting here telling me that I can’t be fixed? That I’m a pathological liar? Man, talk about a racket. That is a nice gig if you can get it, man. All I wanted was to be able to get back to normal. Glad my insurance covered this. Thanks for nothing, man.”

As he was headed for the door, the doctor asked one last question. “Khari? The lying. Other than a lot of sex, what has it gotten you?”

The door slammed behind him but it was the words that rang loudest in his ears. In the stillness of his truck, Khari sat surrounded by the ghosts of his dysfunction for the very first time in his life. He sat in his vehicle and for the first time since c***dhood, he cried. He cried out the tears and the pain of a little boy humiliated by racism until he couldn’t cry any more. He let the movie of his life play in his head. The doctor wasn’t really asking him about the women he lied to, he was asking him if he had convinced himself with his lies that he was as gorgeous, talented, capable, desirable, and as perfect as he wanted to feel inside, as he wanted the world to see him. That’s what every lie was about. He wasn’t lying to convince women that he was all those things; he was lying so that he could try to convince himself. On the inside, Khari felt ugly, talentless, and undesirable and nothing he could tell himself or any other woman would change that. In that moment, Khari started doing the hard work of real therapy and the next week with the doctor was actually like his first. He started peeling off the layers of why he felt so unworthy and unlovable.

Over the next year, Khari spent more time on that couch than he could count. Sometimes, he had two appointments a week. Everything was on an accelerated pace. It was like a 12 step recovery for him only his addiction was not booze or d**gs or even sex, it was lying. The first thing he knew he had to do was get tested for STDs. The fear of having HIV was always in the back of his mind when he had unprotected sex but now he realized his low self-esteem was what was making him take such unnecessary and unhealthy choices. He started contacting women from his past, of his own volition and without prompting, and apologizing for the way he had treated them. Even women who had no clue he had lied to, women who would had fucked him without too much effort and a few strategic lies, he would confess his sins and extend his sincere apologies, something he had NEVER done before in his life. That’s how he knew he was really changing.

Eventually, Khari started dating again. This time, rather than pretending to be a nice guy, pretending to listen, he really was. He would have real conversations with women about real topics, real feelings, real emotions and he would share his opinions and offer insights based on his own revelations. For the first time in his life he started to be discriminating. He didn’t just go to bed with any woman that showed an interest in him, he wanted women that could help him be a better man. He stopped romancing women for sport and he even got his heart broken a few times by women who wanted no parts of him because of his notorious past. Khari was becoming emotionally mature, something that had been a foreign concept to him up until that point. Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

There’s always that little fly in the machine to muck things up though. For all of his making amends, the one person he hadn’t contacted to confess and apologize to was Jacinda. He told his ther****t it was because he just wasn’t ready but then took a deep breath and confessed it was because he had loved her the most and that he had hurt her the most. He knew that what he was calling love before wasn’t real because it was based on emotional deception but the happiest he had ever been in his life was with her. He knew now that what she was suggesting, the reason why he didn’t want to be naked in front of her, the reason he wanted sex to be short, sweet, and to the point is because he didn’t know how to be truly intimate, all he knew how to do was pretend.

Fate has a way of fucking with you when you are putting off the inevitable. After the stabbing, Khari had been transferred to business accounts on his job and he got a work order to upgrade all the routers for the very TV station that Jacinda worked for. He couldn’t sleep the night before. He got up at the crack of dawn and watched mindless TV not so patiently until it was time to shower and go to work. He pulled into the garage with a ton of apprehension. He didn’t even know what floor she worked on, if she still worked there, or if he would come anywhere near her over the course of the next few days. Part of him was terrified that she would stab him if she saw him but another part of him wanted to just apologize and explain. If he was being honest with himself, a part of him wanted another chance with her but he realized through therapy that he had burned that bridge and that the most he should hope for was asking for her forgiveness even if she decided not to accept it. Well, that and he was saying a silent prayer as well that she didn’t try to slit his throat.

It’s a good thing Khari kept an extra uniform shirt and some deodorant in his truck because he was sweating so profusely the first few hours there that he had sweated the underarms of his shirt clean through. It had been over two years since he had talked to Jacinda and he was remiss that he hadn’t actually paid attention to her when she was talking so he didn’t remember what show she worked on. Casually, as to not draw too much attention to himself, he asked a few people if they knew who she was. They all did but they said she worked on several shows and could be anywhere. One young lady said if she saw Jacinda, she would tell him that he was looking for her. He tried to play it off and tell her that wasn’t necessary but he was anxious to see her. He could barely concentrate on doing his job he was so busy looking around to see if he could see her. He hadn’t figured out a plan, he didn’t know what he was going to say if he ran into her, all he knew was he wanted to see her and apologize. Anything beyond that, he wasn’t emotionally mature enough to grasp just yet.

“Khari, is that you?” The familiar voice called out to him while he was on a ladder in the lunch room, his head completely obscured from view by the ceiling tiles. His heart skipped a beat and he almost fell off the ladder. He climbed down slowly and saw her for the first time in years. She looked even more beautiful than she had before.

“Hey, uhmmmm, hi. How are you?” He smiled nervously.

Jacinda didn’t respond, she turned and walked away, visibly shaken and upset. The old Khari would have let her go and not had another fleeting thought about her. The new and slightly improved Khari took a chance he had never taken before, he went after her. “Hey, wait up a minute. There’s something I want to say, no need to say.”

Frozen in her tracks, Jacinda was overcome with emotion. She’d spent the better part of a year trying to heal from the hurt of their breakup. And just when she thought she had gotten to a place where she was okay with moving on, she had to be painfully reminded of his trial and the lies, and the women, and the hurt all over again every day for weeks. Everyone at her job knew she had dated him, everyone whispered behind her back about how he must have cheated on her. She fought back the tears as she stood there, looking at him, hurt and confused like the night he walked out of her apartment and didn’t look back.

Khari started apologizing, quietly, as to not draw too much attention while they were both working, but while the words were coming out of his mouth, he was thinking about the afternoon in his basement when she had come downstairs in nothing but panties, looking sexy and innocent with nothing but the most sincere motives, and he had treated her like she was some sort of criminal. Jacinda heard the words coming out of his mouth and they vaguely sounded like an apology but she was hearing that final speech about how he had never loved her and it had all been a lie. She didn’t hear anything he said. Her mind was racing, trying to figure out how to make him feel like an idiot. He certainly didn’t need any help in that department. He felt ashamed. And that was a good thing. It meant he was finally feeling remorse for the first time in his life. Not pretending to feel remorse, but actually processing his real feelings.

Khari did everything in his power to make the job last longer than it had to. What could have taken a week or so, ended up taking the better part of a month. Every day, he would go out of his way to find Jacinda and say hello, offer to take her to lunch, apologize again, whatever he could do to just be in her presence.

One of the things that being self-aware does to you is teaches you to forgive the people who have hurt you because you realize that they were doing the best they could at the time with the broken tools they had. In the years since they had broken up, Jacinda had done a lot of work on herself and she had it in her heart to forgive but beyond that, she didn’t want to forget. The words, “I didn’t really love you. It was all a lie,” kept ringing over and over in her head. There was no greater betrayal.

Emotionally, Jacinda was in the same place again. She could see that Khari was making an effort to really make amends. She could sense what she thought was his sincerity but she just couldn’t be sure. She felt herself remembering the good times of the year they had together and not the bad times. If they had broken up because they had been fighting, if the relationship had been stagnant, she would be able to walk away and not look back. They had broken up when the relationship was at its best so she was flooded with emotions that she didn’t understand. The man who was before her every day was not the same man who had lied to her about loving her. Or maybe he was and this was all a lie, all pretend, all meant to manipulate her. Every woman has to ask herself-- where is the line between being a doormat and truly forgiving someone? Oh, if life only came with an instruction manual.

The very last thing Khari wanted to do was lie to anyone, let alone Jacinda. He knew he couldn’t keep stalling on the job any longer so he made his move. “Hey, Jay, today is my last day here. I was wondering if I could call you some time and we could maybe hang out, go to a dinner, maybe catch a concert . . . Khari stopped. He realized that he sounded like the Khari of old. “OK, check it. I would just love to hang out with you. You can decide what you want to do. I will be happy just spending time with you.

“I’m having a few friends over on Saturday. You’re welcome to come over if you want.” The words left her mouth before she realized what she had said. Her brother was going to be there. The same brother who swore he would kill Khari if he ever ran across him again. Her girlfriends were going to be there. The same girlfriends who had been there for her when she couldn’t eat, couldn't sleep, and who had counseled her to just let him go. She wanted to rescind the offer the second she made it. The look of pure bliss on Khari’s face made her weak.

“Cool. What time? What do you need me to bring? Do you live in the same place? I remember how to get there.” To say Khari was elated was an understatement. In the time since the shooting, he hadn’t been this excited about anything, about any woman. He was physically aroused and it had nothing to do with wanting to have sex. He just wanted to be in her presence, to soak up her energy. He wanted to show her that he was the better man that he had pretended to be with her those many years ago.

Jacinda had prepared everyone that Khari was coming and EVERYONE voiced their concerns, shock, and utter disbelief that she would invite him. Her brother and father and several male friends huddled in the corner and planned on when and how to beat his ass. He had caused Jacinda to cry more tears than anyone should have to shed over one person. The female contingent of the party, the very same women who told her over and over again that she needed to ignore his emotional immaturity and hold on to him because no man was ever going to be sensitive and the best she could hope for was someone to pay the bills and not bring drama home were the women telling her NOW how she could do so much better. It was extremely humiliating for Jacinda to have to explain to people why should would even give him the time of day, let alone invite him over. She wasn’t even sure she knew why herself. She wasn’t thinking about tomorrow, she wasn’t thinking about next week. All she was thinking about was the moment and something in her spirit told her that forgiving him meant accepting his offer of an olive branch. What was to happen after that, she decided just to let spirit guide her.

Jacinda had reserved the courtyard in her apartment complex for the day. There were card tables, a volleyball net, a pool, and there was FOOD everywhere. Jacinda had recruited every food stylist, every reality show chef champion, executive chef, and every restaurant owner she knew to contribute food for the day. She had personally been cooking for months, freezing things and storing them at work. By the time Khari had actually gotten up the nerve to show up, the party was in full swing. He bought two cases of his favorite beer and made a beeline for her brother. They had met before when he and Jacinda were dating and he had liked him. Khari knew he had to fight that fire first. If someone had done to his sister what he had done to Jacinda, he would have shot him in the back without blinking an eye. This time, he came prepared with a speech and he pulled JJ to the side. No one could tell what was being said but all eyes were on them. Finally, Khari extended his hand to JJ, and JJ leaned in close, whispered something, and walked away, leaving him hanging. JJ and his crew huddled. They kept their eyes on him all day but they didn’t cause any trouble.

The party was great. Jacinda was her usual, vivacious, bubbly, charming self. There was a DJ and the music kept everyone festive. The food couldn’t have been better, the alcohol kept everyone in a light mood without getting out of control. As the hour grew late, everyone started leaving. There was so much food to put away and Khari offered to stay and help clean up. Jacinda’s apartment fridge was regular sized so she had gotten the permission to use the walk-in at the 24 hour grocery store next door to her apartment building. She was going to donate the leftover food to a shelter but they didn’t start taking donations until 11 AM so she was going to do it in the morning. It was almost 2 in the morning before everything had been cleaned up. Everyone else had long since gone home but Khari was there, not complaining a bit, working like a Hebrew slave.

“Jay, that was an outstanding party. Thank you for inviting me. I had a really nice time. It means a lot to me.” He reached out and gave Jacinda a hug. Their bodies touched for the first time since the fateful night of their one year anniversary. It was an innocent hug. Khari pulled her body close and put his hands on her back where he was sure it couldn’t be interpreted as inappropriate or sexual in any way. Her curves felt exquisite and her familiar scent reminded him of days gone by. He closed his eyes and he was in awe of the softness and warmth of her body. Jacinda relaxed into his arms like she had always belonged there. Electricity and sparks and chemistry were flying every damn where. They could have put on a fireworks show for the 4th of July all by themselves. This wasn’t just lust; this was something bigger.

Khari backed away as he felt his body react to the proximity and softness of Jacinda’s. She was not at all oblivious to the intense physical chemistry that was happening. She took a minute to collect her thoughts. “Hey, it’s late, and I’m sure you’re tired. If you want, you can sleep on the sofa until the morning.”

An invitation like that would have been like taking candy from a baby for the old Khari. But he really was a different guy; he really was trying to do the right thing for once in his life. He declined the offer and went home alone. The old Khari would have had someone on standby to talk to on the phone to stroke his ego while stroked his member by the time he got home. The new Khari went home and held his pillow tight and remembered the sensation of that hug. He reminisced about the sounds Jacinda made when she was turned on and the way her body reacted when she was in the throes of an intense orgasm. He closed his eyes and he could see the ugly faces she made when she was getting fucked and how much it had turned him on. Mostly, he thought about how she had tried so very hard to make him open up and be honest and more comfortable in his own skin and how he had resisted her attempts. He had a momentary feeling of shame but he stopped, reflected on how far he had come on his journey towards healing and he drifted off to a sweet slumber with the word Jacinda on his lips.

It was barely 8 AM when the doorbell rang and Jacinda shuffled to the door wearing her fuzzy slippers and her ratty bathrobe and a look on her face that clearly communicated, “Seriously? Seriously? I’m so sleepy I can’t even form words. If I could form words, I would be cursing you out for knocking on my door at quarter to God forbid in the morning.”

“Gooooood morning, sunshine.” Khari had coffee, juice, muffins, a dozen eggs, maple bacon, lox, bagels, cream cheese, fresh fruit, pastry and more in hand. He had enough food to feed an army.

Words that sounded similar to, “What are you doing here at this hour?” came out of Jacinda’s mouth.

“Water your dues in years, Eisenhower? Alrighty then, I see you are still not a morning person, Jay. That’s OK, you go get a shower. I’ll start breakfast.”

The smell of cinnamon rolls baking when she got out of the shower brought Jacinda back to life. She made her way back to the kitchen. Khari looked comfortable there. “Good morning,” she said, a bit more intelligible this time.

He handed her a cup of coffee. “I couldn’t remember if you liked Hazelnut or Amaretto creamer so I took a chance and went with Amaretto. How’d I do?”

She took a sip. Her taste buds came alive and she felt the warmth of the fluid travel down to her stomach. The jolt from the caffeine would come a bit later but the smell and the taste were like heaven to her. “What are you doing here?” she asked again, this time coherent and clear.

“Well, I figured you have a ton of food to take to the homeless shelter this morning and what would take you 5 or 6 trips in your girly little hybrid scooter would take us 1 trip in my manly-man monster truck. So, here I am. Oh shit, you’re going to make me burn the bacon. Do you have cheese for the eggs? Never mind, I’ll find it myself. Go, go, go. Set the table and leave me be while I finish.”

Breakfast was a feast made for a queen. They sat and ate heartily, like they hadn’t eaten in weeks rather than the few hours it had been since the party. As the blood started pumping and the caffeine kicked in, Jacinda blurted out, “Hey, what did you say to my brother yesterday?”

Khari froze for a moment and then looked Jacinda in the eye. “I told him that I loved you and that I was going to do whatever it took to get you back.” Khari was telling the truth in more ways than one. He was confessing his truths and revealing himself in a way that made him vulnerable and afraid. That was a greater truth than he had ever known.

Jacinda’s eyes searched the room, looking for something to focus on to keep her from crying. She remembered the hurt and she wanted to lash out, to hit him, but she sat frozen for a few minutes. Khari let her process. “What did he say to you?”

“He told me that if I hurt you again that he would kill me.”

Jacinda gave a nervous chuckle and went back to eating. After a few minutes of awkward silence she spoke up. “You know, I don’t want you back. You lied to me about loving me and I can never trust you again. I . . .” Her voice crackled and trailed off.

Khari grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to the sofa. He sat next to her and tilted her chin up with his finger. He wanted her to look at him. “Jay, I didn’t lie to you about loving you. I lied to myself. I have been walking around broken and insecure and immature my whole life. When I met you, I pretended to be someone I wasn’t to impress you and get you into bed because that’s what I did. I did, most certainly love you, however. Thing is, I didn’t know how to love you the way you needed because I didn’t love myself. Truth be told, I still don’t know how to love myself but I’m working on it every day and I’m getting there. When we were together, I felt like you were too good for me. No matter how honest I was with you, no matter how many times