How Stella Got Played
You may have heard that Terry McMillan, 53, bestselling author of Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back,is divorcing the young stud she wrote about in that book. Turns out he's gay.
"It was devastating to discover that a relationship I had publicized to the world as life-affirming and built on mutual love was actually based on deceit," she said in court papers. "I was humiliated," states McMillan in court papers.
There is a pre-nup, although the husband, Jonathan Plummer, 30, has asked the court to set it aside and McMillan has been ordered to pay $2000 a month in spousal support.
In a column earlier this week, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post poses a question many readers have. How do you spend 10 years with a man, six of them married, and not know he is gay?
Robinson speculates part of it is due to the "down-low" phenomenon which has gained increased attention in recent years, in which gay black men marry and have families but secretly have sex with men.
"In 10 years with this guy she didn't have a clue? In the bathroom cabinet, no stock of overly metrosexual hair products? No hint when the business he got her to finance turned out to be a dog-grooming salon? Terry McMillan, such a keen observer of love and war between the sexes, and nothing ever showed up on her "gaydar?" asks Robinson.
Down-low or no, we wish Ms. McMillan the best in this difficult time, and may there be many straight hunky guys in her future.
As for the Down Low, it is not limited to African-American men, as a new study by the Centers for Disease Control discovered (duh).