Another Time, Another Place

been a substitute for you.”

“God, I can’t believe that it’s been almost twenty years.”

“Twenty years of time wasted.” He leaned in and placed a soft kiss on my lips. “I don’t want to waste any more of it.”

Aleck and I made love for the rest of the night and made a promise that we would fornicate under the consent of the king for the rest of our lives. The next day I was a nervous wreck as we set out to tell A.J. the truth. Kids are interesting people. They take things better than we ever could. A.J. was confused and inquisitive at first, but never angry. He was happy to have a father in his life and neither of them could get over how much they resembled each other.

Aleck moved to Atlanta to be with us and we were married that New Year’s Eve. To this day, we make the most of every day and never look back. Every night, when Aleck settles down to sleep inside of me, because I love to feel his dick pulsating against my walls while I am in a deep slumber, I thank God for him…for us.

Let this serve as a lesson for those of you who have loved someone and had to let them go. Things never happen on our time… they happen on His time. If things do not work out the first time, or even the second time, there can always be another time and another place.

ABYSSINIA, ETHIOPIA

MAY 2008

A.J.

I was stunned. No…stunned did not describe it. It had to be some type of mistake, or a weird coincidence.

“What’s wrong, Honey?” my girlfriend Jasmine asked, taking my hand.

“Do you see this?” I asked, pointing with my other hand. She stared at the painting and I could feel her start to shiver. “Can you believe it?”

“It can’t be,” Jasmine whispered. “Impossible.”

“Yes, it’s impossible, but yet, there they are…in vivid color.”

Jasmine and I had been dating for a year. My parents insisted that they wanted me to take a historical vacation and decided to pay for the two of us to travel to Ethiopia. My dad had paid to have a genealogy test done—one of those mail order things where he swabbed the inside of his mouth and sent it off for the results. It came back that his genes traced back to Ethiopia, which was news to him. He was so excited that he suggested that we go see the culture there.

We are inside an art museum looking at a display about Menelek II, the King of Kings of Abyssinia, who lived from 1844-1913. He was considered one of the great leaders of world history because he was able to unite several kingdoms that had fiercely opposed each other. He was baptized as Sahle Maryam, but later was given title of emperor. All of that was well and good but could not explain what Jasmine and I were looking at. It was a portrait of Menelek II and his wife, Taytu Betul, a noblewoman of imperial blood. While they were dressed in traditional garb with head wraps, there was no denying it. Even with the beard, I was staring into the eyes of my father…and my mother was standing beside him. There was a scroll in her hand and I squinted to make out a few of the words. It said: “Under the consent of the king.”