THE GREY AREA

Members of Alabama’s Black upper crust pursue sexual intrigues in this frisky romance.

Johnson’s story charts love lives amongst Birmingham’s financially successful Black bourgeoisie. The players include Dana, a call-center manager and poet who gives readings at fashionable nightspot Lucky’s Lounge; she’s having an affair with the venue’s owner, Token, a wealthy architect. Though she is raptly attentive to Token’s sexual demands—his nickname for her is M.B., which stands for “My Bitch”—Dana’s anger at him for refusing to divorce his wife Tiara is not appeased by gifts of jewelry or even an Audi R8 with a giant red bow on top. Then there’s Giselle, also known as DJ Jazzy G at radio station V99.4, who’s getting over a heartrending breakup when her pal Amber sends her a luscious nude photo of attractive car salesman Monty Jones; her flirty direct-message exchanges with Monty quickly escalate to phone sex. Giselle is momentarily put off when she learns that Monty is also a “sexual development companion” who had been hired by Amber to help her get her groove back, but she shrugs it off and signs up for Monty’s hands-on development services. Amber treats herself when she goes on a cruise with her boring bank-owner husband Gene and meets handsome private eye Leo on the Lido deck. After drugging Gene with a sedative, Amber repairs to Leo’s cabin for an assignation in which the illicit couple is joined by Leo’s cousin Ethan. The only one not seeing any action is poor Tiara, whose 20-year marriage to Token has frayed since she was waylaid by major depression and gained 60 pounds—her 8,000 square foot mansion feels like a “prison.” When Tiara and Dana both show up at Lucky’s 10th anniversary bash, the stage is set for tense confrontations that culminate in passion and fire.

Johnson’s yarn is cheerfully lubricious, with much parading of lingerie and lots of explicit sex. The characters are energetic and sharply drawn, if a bit two-dimensional—the two dimensions being lust and greed. (Contemplating marriage to Token, Dana “imagined getting her own black card and shopping limitlessly….getting to leave the workforce to be a stay-at-home housewife….it made her climax harder than she ever had before.”) There’s plenty of tawdry atmosphere, conveyed in evocative prose that sneaks some intelligent reflection beneath the characters’ impulsiveness. (“It took all I had not to burst out of there and beat her ass. But what would that do, huh? Get me banned from the club and lose out on my dream, that’s what.”) While the story is awash in sex, Johnson can also deftly evoke the plangent feelings that accompany a dying relationship: “When Token does make it home for dinner,” Tiara muses, “the conversation is scarce. We sit on opposite ends of our long, rectangular table, barely making eye contact.” The result is a fun, erotic romp that has a heart as well as a healthy libido.

An entertaining erotic novel with punchy prose that gets at the emotion underneath the raunch.