This is my one hundred and twentieth submission. To the 1200 plus who faithfully follow my stories I want to say thank you.
As always, anyone participating in sexual activities are 18 or older.
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"Wat you need Mrs. Everest is a couple hours of sex with a man who know what they be doin, you need some more of that chocolate bar you got so used to wit yo dead husband."
I couldn't believe the insolence of this snot nosed kid as the nine of us sat at our lunch table. I'd been the supervisor of the warehouse for over six years and never in all that time had I experienced one so brazen and stupid. We were a mixed group and all got along well, there were two Hispanic, one a woman, three white including myself and four black men, or should I say three black men and one boy.
Ivan, my lead man, stood to dress the kid down, being a large black man himself I think he felt it necessary to put this kid in his place, I held up my hand in a stop gesture and answered the kid.
"If I did take a man into my bed it would be just that, a man and not a boy like you, being twenty-one does not make you a man. You think because my late husband was black that I somehow need to find another black man to fulfil my needs? I was in love with and married a man, not a skin color you idiot, and before you throw out the big black cock story, Leonard was as average as any of the rest of the men sitting at this table."
I could see the ire on his face as he spoke, "Well you aint nevah been wit somebody like me or you wouldn't be talkin that shit."
I decided to call his bluff, "Okay smartass, whip it out, show us what you've got, I'm betting you are anything but the biggest at the table."
Ivan was still standing, "Well whip it out or keep your stupid mouth shut, you been here what, five months, and you think you can talk to Mrs. E like that? We all knew Leonard and he was ten times the man you'll ever be. You need to apologize boy and don't ever let me hear you talking like that again."
I could see him squirming knowing he'd seriously overstepped his bounds. His name was one of those newer made up ones, Ladino, and he was perilously close to losing his job, I believe he sensed it and stood.
"I apologize Mrs. E."
I glared at him, "I've a mind to write you up for sexual harassment, if I do you're out of here on your ear, instead I'm going to give you a reprimand with a reference to what you said. Just because I was married to a sweet black man don't you ever think for an instant that I have a black ace of spades tattooed on my ass. Ivan, please take this idiot away, boys and girls let's get back to work."
Leonard and I had been married sixteen years when a negative reaction to medication following a root canal took him from me while I slept. Feeling his cold body next to mine in the morning was the saddest moment of my life. He was a sweet man, a kind man, not all wrapped up in the black/white issues that seem to prevail with so many of both races. He was well educated, respected within his precinct as a lead investigator, treated me like his queen and never made me feel less than special. Sadly, we didn't have kids, that was entirely my fault, I didn't know I was infertile until we'd been trying for three years.
Though we shed tears and pined for a child we worked through our sorrow and made a life focused around the two of us. We had both experienced the stupidity of ignorance on both sides of the race spectrum, there were those from my side of the aisle who thought he was somehow less than they were even though he was far more educated and much better paid than those making such assumptions. For me the worst was that because I was married to a black man that other black men viewed me as communal property. There were several that Leonard had to put in their place before word got out that I belonged to Leonard and no one else.
I was nineteen when we met, he was already on the force and had stopped me for a rolling violation (I didn't fully stop at a red light before turning right) I batted my eyes and tried to flirt my way out of the citation to no avail. At the time he was twenty-seven and had just taken his detective exam, a fact I came to know much later. Ironically we crossed paths again two nights later at a gas station, he was on one side of the pump and me on the other, he was in his civilian vehicle and in civvies so I wasn't paying attention, it was he who recognized me first.
With a broad smile he got my attention, "Didn't roll through any stop lights today did you?"
Looking up I smiled as I remembered, "Oh hi, nope. I made sure I stopped completely at every light. I've never been stopped like that before, it surprised me."
Another smile, "I have a confession to make, I've never seen anybody as pretty as you and was looking for a reason to pull you over."
"Well you could have given me a warning instead of a ticket."
"I could have, but then you'd have thought you charmed your way out of it, I have to give you credit, you sure tried."
We married a year later on my twentieth birthday, I remember standing graveside as they handed me the flag that had draped his coffin, 37 and a widow. How would I go on, how would I cope, we had been one another's lives for so many years, in my mind there would never be another, and yet I knew as young as I was that chain of thought would probably change in time.
Walking back to my workstation I was groveling in the fact that at the age of forty-one I still had to put up with shit like what had happened at lunch. Where do these young men get such ideas, who feeds their heads with all this crap? Ivan met me about halfway to my desk and walked alongside.
"You okay Mrs. E, he had no right talking to you like that. Nobody else on the crew thinks that way, if you want the guys and me to do it, we can tune him up after work. I know where he drinks."
I reached up and squeezed his elbow, "Thanks but no thanks, I would feel horrible if you somehow got in trouble. We'll get through this like we have other things, maybe keep an eye on him for me, if his work ethic doesn't improve soon I won't have a choice but to let him go. Oh, and thanks for backing me, it's greatly appreciated, say hi to Beverly for me."
His wife made the best sweet rolls I had ever tasted. The kid's improved attitude lasted about two weeks, when he thought I was alone he approached me again about having him screw me, (my words, not his) that he could make me happy, blah, blah, blah. Little did sonny know that if I flipped a switch next to my desk that a series of lights would flash throughout the warehouse indicating an emergency response was necessary. The entire crew was outside my open door in less than a minute, his goose was cooked and he knew it, I called HR who in turn had security escort him to his locker and from the building.