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Henry from San Rafael.

Late last year, a Boston nightclub ended an event for black Harvard and Yale alumni for fear that the long line of African Americans outside the club would attract ‘gangbangers’. Now, after months of legal wrangling, the club owner has agreed to apologize!

It all began just before Thanksgiving, when a black Ivy League alumni group claimed that Cure Lounge in Boston prematurely ended an alumni party held at the club on November 20 for fear that a line of African Americans outside of the nightclub would attract “local gangbangers,” according to Michael Beal, a Harvard alum who helped organize the event. Some alumni had traveled across the country to attend the event, and the incident made international headlines after the alumni group accused club management of racial discrimination.

Club spokesman George K. Regan explained that Cure Lounge’s decision to end the event early had nothing to do with race, claiming security spotted “some people in line known to police as ‘bad people.’” But many, including Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley who called for further investigation, didn’t buy that excuse.

Police were reportedly never called to the scene, so how could security have identified anyone in line as “bad?” Moreover, Beal said that event organizers pre-sold tickets to the celebration exclusively to Ivy League alumni, making it implausible that gangbangers managed to infiltrate the event.

“Massachusetts businesses cannot refuse to host events because of racial reasons,” Coakley said in a statement. “In this case, club waitstaff made harmful and ill-conceived conclusions based on the simple fact that most of the guests were black.”

The $30,000 fine the club had to pay will be given to organizations that help African Americans in higher education. Plus, the club’s public apology will remain on its website for 30 days. It states in part: “The owners, managers and employees of Cure Lounge wish to extend our deepest apologies to all of those affected, both directly and indirectly, by the unfortunate events that occurred on the evening of November 20, 2010… Cure Lounge does not tolerate racism.”

Racism in nightclubs is an issue throughout the country. African Americans consistently complain of being turned away from clubs for specious reasons. Hopefully, the actions the Massachusetts Attorney General took against Cure Lounge will discourage other nightlife establishments from racially discriminating against clientele. No business reserves the right to refuse service based on race.

In light of these inconsistencies, Nadra Kareem Nittle wrote a Change.org petition and news story three months ago demanding that Cure Lounge apologize for its treatment of Harvard and Yale’s black alums. More than 130 Change.org members answered the call, generating a significant volume of protest emails directly to the club spokesperson. It worked!

We were virgins and we had decided that before we graduated we would lose our virginities. She was a real looker so I knew that she would have a problem.

But 4 years later there she was telling me that she was in the same predicament as I. We were still virgins. I was shocked. The woman was 5’9″, maybe 120lbs with coal black shoulder length naturally wavy hair. She had full Sofia Loren lips and deep blue eyes.

I asked her how that happened. She said that she was waiting for me to make my move. I said that it never occurred to me that she would sleep with a guy like me.

She said that I was the smartest guy she knew and the nicest. I was incredibly happy. I had never allowed myself to think of Eve romantically for fear she might discover my feelings and shun me.

“So,” she said, “What do we do about it?”

I couldn’t think because my mind was still wrapped around her telling me she wanted me.

Then she suggested we go to her uncle’s cabin for the weekend before we went home for the Christmas break. We could camp out and make love in the forest. The next two days waiting for classes to end for Christmas break hung around for months.

We told our friends that we were going home for break, but we had planned to rent a car and head up to her uncle’s cabin. When we got to the cabin it was stocked as she had said. She showed me her uncle’s hunting gear which included several rifles a german luger and three fantastic Bowie knives. We unshielved them and feigned skinning deer and bears.

Finally we settled down to getting up the nerve to do it. We made a fire. And polished off two bottles of wine a very good red and a so so white. She undressed down to her bra and panty and I down to my briefs.
But it was cold and the fire wood was low. So I suggested that I take the axe and go out and cut some more fire wood from the logs in the wood shed.

She laughed hysterically and said that the axe looked bigger than me. I could see that she was drunk and nervous so I told her to quit playing with the knives and sit down until I returned but under no circumstances was she to lie down because I did not want to return to a sleeping woman.

I got dressed and went out to the wood shed to manly axe some wood. When I returned about 30 to 40 minutes later she was laying in a pool of blood. I don’t know how but she had fell on one of the Bowie knives and it was sticking from one side of her neck through to the other as she lay on her back.

She had lost so much blood that the bear skin rug she lying on was soaked. I sat through the night with her body crying. Morning came with me wide awake and scared to call the police. What if they thought I had killed her?

So I cleaned up the cabin and took the body out into the woods and buried it. I took her things and dropped them off at a good will station near campus. Then I drove home. It was a long empty 12 hour drive.

Before I returned to school I had resolved to confess. I was going to leave home early and drive up to the cabin and retrieve Eve’s body and take it to the police.

When I dug up her body all I found were her two legs from the Knees down without feet. Looking at what was left it was clear that someone had neatly severed that part of her body from the rest and had carefully rapped the remains to keep it from decaying.

I ran to my car got in and drove away. I was still fully committed to telling the police what had happened that night. But the shock made me rush to my dorm and take a hot shower.

I had only been sitting on my bed for about five minutes when I heard Eve’s voice from the other side of the door demanding that I open up and greet her.

I opened up; she smiled and said “I missed you.” and kissed me.

It was Eve. There she was very much alive and happy to see me. She came in sat on my bed kissed me again this time with purpose. We made love and she spent the night.

We were inseparable for the next four months. I noticed a slight difference in her behavior. Or rather an unbelievable difference. She acted as if she didn’t really understand what she was doing.

Spoons, forks, knives, slang, and some every day words and expressions would baffle her. It was as if she had been in a coma and she was just learning what it was like to be alive.

She clung to me and asked me about her every move, even to what kind of tampons she should buy. I mean she made me buy them for her. The we put them in together. Me holding the tampon while she opened herself up so I could put it in. She said it made us closer.

“Either that or you don’t know how to do it I said.” “like you knew how to do it that night in the cabin” she said. I said “you’re not Eve.”

She smiled and said I’d better be because we are going to be married or you are going to jail for murder. Frankly at that time, I really didn’t know what to believe.

The only thing I was sure of was that I loved Eve and her asking me to marry her was a stroke of luck because I would never have had the courage to ask her.

We graduated 6 weeks later and got married. We decided not to get pregnant until we both had good jobs. I got an offer from a computer firm in Silicon Valley paying a high 5 figure income.

Eve advised me to take it and said that she would get a job when we got there. She did. It took her about three weeks to get an advertising job in one of the big firms in San Francisco.

I never visited her at her job and we always went to my company’s affairs. A few years later I came home and she was crying. I had never seen her cry before. I held her and asked her what was upsetting her. She said that she knew I was going to leave her.

I told her that I loved her and that I would never leave her. Then she told me that the doctors told her that she could not have children. I said that we should get a second opinion. She started to bawl again and I said it didn’t matter because I loved her. We never brought it up again.

On her 30th birthday she said Ly I only have 5 more years with you and then I have to go back home. That was when it all came back to me and I said “You are not Eve.”

She smiled and said, “Of course not. Eve stumbled and fell on her uncle’s Bowie knife and you buried the body in the woods behind the cabin.”

I said “if that’s true, who the fuck are you and how come you look exactly like Eve down to that glass cut she got on her left thigh when she was 11.”

She smiled and said, ” don’t forget the knots on my toes for wearing my high heels too tight.”

“Who are you” I asked. This time I was not sure if I was angry or scared that the answer would break us up forever. God knows I still loved the woman standing before me.

She said, “It’s me, that’s all you need to know.”

“Then why would you say we only have 5 years left together?”

She looked at me lovingly and said “You are an earthling, your body composition makes you a prisoner of this tiny rock in a one world inhabited solar system. I am a star traveler.”

She was smiling and holding her arms open for me to enter them as she said it. I said “you are crazy.” She sat down, put her head between her shoulders and sighed. Then she stood up and up and up until her head touched the celling.

She had become 10 feet tall in an instant. Five years later, she left and when back to her planet. We were both 35 years old.

I am 40 today. On her birthday March 4th she will be 40. At least as Eve, she will be 40. She promised that on her 40th birthday, if I never told anyone, she would return and we could take up where we left off.

Last night I woke up and I didn’t believe her any more. So I’m telling.

If you are reading this, I don’t love you anymore Eve. It has been too lonely without you.

Ly