Black is Black
"LEAH, WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN?" My husband, David, screamed at me as I entered our house late on Friday afternoon. "I'VE BEEN FRANTICALLY LOOKING FOR YOU ALL WEEK. YOUR PARENTS DIDN'T KNOW WHERE YOU WERE EVEN THOUGH YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING THERE. YOU'LL BE HAPPY TO KNOW THAT YOUR FATHER IS IN PERFECT HEALTH. YOUR OFFICE IS ALMOST AS FRANTIC AS I AM BECAUSE YOU NEVER BOTHERED TO TELL THEM YOU WEREN'T COMING TO WORK. SO, WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH YOU?"
I knew this was coming and I deserved his outrage because I had been lying to and cheating on my husband of six years for the past two weeks. I had come home for the express purpose of telling David I was leaving him and that he should divorce me.
"Look David, I'm sorry about lying to you for the past two weeks, but I've come home to set the record straight and to set you free because you don't deserve how I have treated you."
David looked at me with a frown and said, "I want the whole truth out of you. Why did you lie to me about where you've been, why are you dressed so slutty and when did you get your nipples pierced?" I was wearing jeans and a see-through shirt favored by my lover Tyrone.
"I'll tell you everything you want to know. I'm not too sure you want to her everything because a lot of it is pretty sordid, but I'll tell you as little or as much as you want to hear." David still looked enraged and I knew my story would piss him off even more.
"I want to hear every last detail. I don't want you to leave out anything."
"Okay..." This is what I told him.
As you know, I called you two weeks ago about going out with the girls from my office to celebrate Tina's engagement. I told you we would be out late drinking and you laughed and said, "No problem. Have fun!"
When five o'clock rolled around, about 15 of us met in the lobby. When someone asked where we were going, someone else said, "Let Tina choose, it's her party"
All eyes turned to Tina and she said, "Have any of you been to the Blue Diamond? It's a jazz club and since it's Friday night they'll have a combo playing with dancing. Sound good?" Everyone said that that sounded like fun, so phones were turned on to GPS maps, the name of the club was entered and everyone piled into their cars. I navigated for Lois as we headed out because I was going to leave my car at work and take a cab home.
We were in a part of town I wasn't too familiar with as we approached the club. It occupied the lower floor of an older building that had apartments on the upper floors. When we all arrived in the parking lot we entered the club all together. It was pretty dark in there and was pretty empty, but it was very early for a club. We all took up two semi-circular booths as we all talked excitedly about Tina's engagement. A young black woman took our drink orders and then the talking resumed.
By 9pm, I had had several gin and tonics and had a nice buzz going. The band, consisting of a piano, an upright bass, drums and a black woman singer had started and the place began filling up and I noticed that the vast majority of patrons were African-American. There was a mixed group of black men and women sitting in the booth behind me and at one point one of the men asked me if I could pass him a napkin. I had several that I had amassed while drinking, so I grabbed one, turned towards him and handed it to him. He thanked me and then asked if I'd like to dance.
He seemed like a nice guy, so I said that would be nice. We both slid out of our booths and when he stood next to me he was towering above me. I swear this guy was at least 6'6". He seemed to be very well built and was quite handsome with very dark skin. He took my hand in his which I noticed was huge as my hand got lost in his.
There were a handful of couples dancing as he took me in his arms. The band was playing 'Cry Me a River' a nice slow tune which the singer made very soulful. As we danced, my partner introduced himself, "I'm Tyrone, but my friends call me Ty."
I smiled and said, "I'm Leah, nice to meet you." We danced in silence for a couple of minutes and I noticed that his right hand seemed to cover most of my back. I then asked, "Do you come here often? It seems like a nice place and I love the music."
Ty chuckled and said, "Yeah, I guess I come here often since I'm one of the owners and own the building."
"Wow," I exclaimed, "You own the whole building? I love these older places. They have so much more character than the stuff they build today."
Ty smiled and said, "Yeah, they are nice, but can be a pain to keep up. So, what do you and your girlfriends do? I'm guessing you all work at the same place."
"We work for an advertising agency and I'm a group supervisor. We put together ad campaigns for businesses around town. We do TV spots, magazine ads and lately we've put together online advertisements. Print ads are dying away, so we've been concentrating on online stuff via Twitter, Facebook and we create websites. It's a pretty interesting field. I love it."
Ty was quiet for a while and then he smiled and asked, "Do you think you could put together a nice campaign for this place? We'd like to diversify our clientele a bit. You may have noticed that most of our usual customers are black. I'd like to get a few more white faces in here like yours to make it look nicer."