Karrine Steffans wondering why Darius is denying her***

Karrine Steffans isn't quite sure why Darius McCrary said they weren't together, because she knows that they are.

kay gang, you all saw the Darius McCrary interview in the DeceBinex and MaxCyte Collaborate on Cancer Immunotherapy Researchmber issue. If you didn't, you missed something special. It was the first time a man described Karrine Steffans, best known as "Superhead," a.k.a. "Video Vixen," writer of sex-and-tell books about all the celebrities she's had. In his interview, Darius announced that he's leaving her--can't stay anymore--but when I interviewed her (well before Darius's cover story hit newsstands) Karrine was shocked to hear that he was leaving and she exclaimed, "He's here!" According to recent news, I think she's more right than he is.

Well, when you think about it, Darius did have a lot of positive things to say about her, including his confession that he still loves her and his nostalgic explanations of why men go nuts for Karrine despite knowing that all the vivid details of what they do with her will likely wind up in one of her tell-all books.

But there is much more here than the Karrine and Darius love story. This 21st century phenomenon also gave me the inside scoop on what happened between her and Ray J, her and Lil' Wayne, her and Bobby Brown, and how she gets guys to go so nuts about her and what she really does when she's invited to speak to college students and how she came to be who she is.

Regardless how you feel about her claim to fame as Miss Superhead, have an open mind and you are sure to be fascinated by this look into the mind of a woman who walks her own walk in search of love and "a guy who will stay."

***

Jamie: How has the response been toward this book?

Karrine: You know, it's been weird because, with the first book--I tell you, d@#n if you do, d@#n if you don't. First book, people were, like, oh my god, I can't believe she put all that stuff in here, and how dare she, and this is atrocious. And then this book is a lot different than the first book, and I'm hearing a lot of people say, where's all the stuff? Where's all the gossip? And so it's like I can't win with some people.

Jamie: How many copies did the first book sell?

Karrine: According to Bookstand, we're in the 300,000 range in the U.S. It doesn't count Germany and Poland, where we're also printed. So it's hard to say.

Jamie: You have gotten into men's psyches, and what I hear a lot is, "she's cool; she's real"--the cooking and the cleaning house thing--also that you watch the games with them and you get into what they do.

Karrine: Well, you see, girls never liked me growing up. So I always talked to the boys. I ended up climbing trees with the guys after school, sitting in the trees and talking, and as I've gotten older that same thing happened. The guys come to my house football Sunday. I cook, I serve them, then I crack open a beer and we all talk about either football or their girlfriends.

Jamie: You're just like one of the boys?

Karrine: I'm just one of the boys.

Jamie: The other thing that was said was that you don't talk as much as girls do.

Karrine: I listen. And I wasn't always like this. I've just learned through trial and error to just shut up. Sometimes it's better to understand than to be understood, and you don't always have to say something. I don't argue. I just accept whatever you're saying to me. Take that as your truth and let you deal with it. I don't have to combat everything you say.

Jamie: But it can hurt you. I see so many different sides of you here because you are vulnerable. Somehow you're able to wrap words around your thoughts and feelings and capsulize what's happened to you. And then you hold it in your hand or something, analyze it and you're able to continue. You used to cut yourself all the time. You carved--

Karrine: --names and--

Jamie: Love, hate, and--

Karrine: I do that too.

Jamie: And that was because of what you were going through with Mom and Dad or whatever, right?

Karrine: Yeah, just psychological issues. I was always in my books. I was always very quiet. I didn't have the freedom to discuss 'cause in my household, you didn't speak unless you were spoken to. I'm the mother, you're the child, shut the hell up. So when I was in pain, I needed to release it. And I would write. That was my big way as a kid. But there were a lot of times when I couldn't write unless I could see it. And so I would carve names--maybe the name of the person who hurt me or the words that I'm looking for, whether it's "love" or whether I feel lonely--whatever it is [I'd carve] that feeling into my thigh, into my arms, into my stomach sometimes. And I could then see it. It would transfer the pain from my heart to my thigh. Then I could see it and I wouldn't feel it in my heart anymore. I was feeling it on my thigh.

Jamie: Are those scars still there?

Karrine: You never cut yourself enough to scar. You just want to have that first layer. It's more like welting or shallow cutting.

Jamie: So mom never noticed that? Do you have a relationship with Mommy now?

Karrine: I talk to her. I have tried not to talk to her, but she goes in the house and talks to my son. So I'm able to take up the phone at times and discuss and talk. She actually talks at me and I just kind of listen.

Jamie: Was she angry about the first book?

Karrine: I think she was in denial. She talked about me like a dog. People were, like, wow, this is your mom?

Jamie: What happened to her? Do you know anything about how she was raised, or why she was the way she was toward you?

Karrine: From what I've been told, I know my mother was the last of seven children. She was the lightest one 'cause her father, he's Puerto Rican and English. And so there was that torment within the family for being light-skinned, and that issue a lot of Black folks have. We're all from St. Thomas. And that's not rare to be light-skinned or White on the island. But in the family, she was the only one. And her father actually married my grandmother, so she, I think, had maybe a sense of entitlement, you know, like, I'm the only real legitimate child here. Maybe she'd combat it with that. I know that my grandfather left my grandmother, and I think it probably crushed my mom, and I think maybe she started looking for her daddy in men. My father did well for himself, as he does now, but I think when my mother saw my father, that was her way out, and he didn't take her when he left. And so I think that was because he was already engaged to a French woman.

Jamie: He was engaged to a French woman when he had you?

Karrine: Yeah, he was already engaged to someone.

Jamie: And she didn't know that?

Karrine: She knew, but I think she thought that she could change everything. You know, she had me. He left with this French woman and never came back. And so I think that she took a lot of that out on me and I think I was the keep-a-man baby and it never worked out.

Jamie: Why do you think that men don't care whether you've been with a lot of other men? Or do they?

Karrine: Some men care, but not enough to stay away from me. I'm this legend now and people just want to say they've met me. People want to say that they've slept with me, and then they find out that it's not that easy. It's never been that easy. But see, now I'm untouchable. Now, you can't ask me.

Jamie: Karrine, do you enjoy sex?

Karrine: I've never enjoyed sex. What I enjoy is feeling loved. But it's different now for me. It's been different for a very long time. Bill [Maher] and me were together for about a year. Then before Bill, I was in a relationship for six months and then before that another relationship for six months. So I had only known two people for about a year before Bill. Then there was Bill for a year. And then I didn't date, really, until [Antonio] Tarver. Then that turned into a hot-a## mess. Then I kind of stayed to myself, and now I'm in a relationship. So there hasn't been that many people.

Jamie: Okay. So you can be monogamous. That's what you're telling me here?

Karrine: I have been. I don't think people realize, like, in the first book, most of those people were all in a year-and-a-half span.

Jamie: Do you know how many you've been with? Have you counted that up?

Karrine: No. I stopped counting in high school. I've been having sex since I was 13 years old, and there's no reason to count that.

Jamie: Yeah. When that happened when you were 13, I know Oprah wanted to know about how you felt back then. How did you feel?

Karrine: I'm so glad I'm in love right now because it's easy for me to look back and see the difference. So now, I'm even clearer than I've been before. After being raped at 13, it took me nine months--because first of all, I never told anybody. And when I came home--it's in the first book--when I came home from being raped, my mother beat me down. So I was never able to say, "Wait a minute! I was kidnapped and raped for three days." I was gone for three days, you know, tied up in a hotel room.

Jamie: And she said you smelled like--

Karrine: Yeah. Of course I do because I was raped for three days. But if you would just have asked me; if you had been worried for just one minute, then I would have maybe been able to tell you. But you beat me down to the ground. I'll never forget that.

Jamie: And what did she say when it came out?

Karrine: She didn't say anything. We don't talk. My mother is in some other planet where nothing ever happens. So we still haven't discussed it. It took nine months to have sex. I was 14 by then, and I remember thinking that if I could make him really like me, then it will erase that first time. Because my first memory of sex is being brutally raped. So I needed a new memory. Since I was 13 or 14 I've been trying to make a new memory 'cause each of the last memories weren't good. So okay, he didn't work out. Okay, now I need a new memory. And the next thing you knew, you're 21 and you have a lot of bad memories and you still haven't gotten a good one.

Jamie: What would have been a good one?

Karrine: It's hard to say because in my head, I'm looking for someone to stay. Just stay, that's all. You know, I've seen men come in and out of my mother's life. Hardly anyone has a husband in my family. Like, they were just women who have a lot of sex with a lot of people. And then I get raped. And no one ever really stayed until I got older. So I'm already married, divorced and have a baby. Now my marriage is a bad memory. Now I have to erase that. I'm constantly having to erase, and you never erase it; you just compound. That's why I took one time a nine-month celibacy time for myself, and then I took 11 months. There was no sex at all .... That's how you clarify.

For more, pick up the January issue of Sister 2 Sister, on newsstands now.