Amsterdam Nightlife

“That’s it. I’ll call Ronald!” It came as an epiphany to me to call my ex-boyfriend who was a major drug dealer. Ronald had been my lover for eight years--a veritable eight- year one-night stand. He was a rasta from St. Lucia and was in the country illegally. Everything he did was illegal including collecting parking tickets on rented cars in my name. He prided himself on his immorality, and I went along with it because the sex was so good. He knew how to tease me with his average sized black cock just enough that I would beg him to fuck me. He had a posse of white middle class Jewish women, but I had been his favorite. I had put up with his emotional torture and infidelity because we had had a non-verbal understanding. My friend Jane called it his “Mugambe tribe.” He claimed he needed more than one woman because of his African roots. We broke up when he threatened someone I was dating. “I’m going to pull an O.J. Simpson,” he told Ira Katz over the phone. Needless to say, Ira had been freaked and I never saw him or heard from him again. Ronald’s double standard was too much to bear. So, after he got busted, I had packed up all his bags before he went to jail, and put them on the street. His underwear had icicles in them for which he never forgave me. Once he got out of jail, we didn’t see each other because he was mad at me. I called him anyway.

I remembered his cell phone by heart. I dialed. My heart was racing. He picked up.

“Ronald, it’s me, Penelope,” I said.

“Yes, Miss,” he said in his sweetest voice. Ronald had a sweet voice for women and a macho gruff voice for his compadres and associates.

“I don’t want to get laid. That’s not why I’m calling.”

“Why not miss?” he begged. Ronald often begged for me, even one time after I threw a drink at him in a public place.

“Ronald, you know I can’t forgive you for what you did to Ira,” I said, making a feeble attempt at communication.

“I want you,” he continued.

“That’s not what this phone call is all about, Ronald.”

“Then what is it?”

“I lost my job, and need to make some money. I want to deal drugs.”

“That’s not what a nice Jewish girl does,” said Ronald facetiously. “Why don’t you just go back to being a legal secretary?”