This is my first story and even though I originally wanted this to be a quick hitter, it eventually evolved into something else so I just went with it. I hope somebody out there enjoys it.
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I never knew I had a thing for black women until I met Crystal back in the mid 1980s. And even then, it took over two years and seemingly endless drama for that phenomenon to be discovered. I met her when I was a senior in high school. I played football and basketball in school and ultimately (and stupidly) rejected several small college athletic scholarships because, as I told my parents at the time, "I don't want to go to school anymore." My parents responded by saying "That's fine" followed by "the free ride is over..get a job and start pulling your own weight around here." Thus, a friend of mine got me a job working as a busboy at the restaurant he worked at. It was there that I met Crystal.
She was 24 at that time and had just enrolled to get her Masters degree at the local university. Crystal was about 5'4 and weighed probably about 120 pounds. She had a dark mocha complexion, soft and full lips, radiant brown eyes, and beautiful shoulder length black hair that she wore straight in the winter and then put into braids in the summer. Crystal's piercing eyes and serious disposition made her look mean but if and when she smiled it really lit up the room. It was her body, however, that made a teenage boy like me drool. She had smooth and luscious curves everywhere highlighting her perfect ass, supple breasts, and long, slender legs.
I, meanwhile, was two months shy of my 18th birthday and had no ambitions whatsoever except to graduate high school and find out where the next party was. I still had my athletic frame at 6'1 and 180 pounds which was complimented by my brown hair and brown eyes. Girlfriends had never been in shortage for me so I guess you could say I was decent looking. Even so, I never once considered or even contemplated hitting on Crystal. There was the obvious black/white thing up front but what was even more legit to me was that she was an educated and ambitious woman and I was just a clueless teen trying to figure out what life had in store for me. In my opinion, she was just way out of my league.
Crystal had gotten hired as a server a month or so after me and when I first met her she was quiet and very aloof. Not just with me but with the whole staff. She never smiled, didn't utter one social word to anybody, and represented like she was all business. At least that was the perception but the reality was that she was feeling like a fish out of water.
As I found out later, Crystal grew up in D.C. and then went to an all black college so this was her first immersion into the real "white" world. Of course, I didn't know this at the time and thus, I didn't make it a priority to get to know her or to make her feel welcome. That inevitable result came about just by my natural disposition to talk shit to everybody and playfully provoke them. The bottom line was that color of her skin didn't preclude her from my swath.
I was a prankster at work but I was also productive and efficient so all the servers tolerated my shenanigans. Crystal was no different. I made it my goal to get her to open up and quit being so stand offish so I messed with her non stop. My best friend growing up was black and I had interacted with his family (he had two older sisters) and their friends for over a decade so I knew which buttons to push.
Little by little I got her to warm up to me and then eventually to everyone else. In only a matter of months she became one of us and was knee deep in our staff's social and work related activities. Crystal was conscience of and grateful that I had pushed her into opening herself up and that Christmas she gave me a pair of Nike sweats with a note that read "Without you, I don't think I could have made it work out here. Thank You."
Over the next two years Crystal and I became closer and our relationship evolved into one where she took the role of my big sister. In fact, all the female servers were in their mid 20s to 40s so they all spoke down to me like that including Crystal. But the difference with Crystal was that she trusted me and I trusted her. She confided to me in her personal and work life and I sought out her opinion on problems in my life. There wasn't anything we were afraid to talk to each other about.
A few times we ventured into what seemed like intimate territory but the combination of her reluctance to take the lead and my outright fear of offending her kept us on the straight and narrow. I was infatuated with her but stopped myself short of dreaming because I honestly thought I had a better shot at winning the lottery than I did of ever getting with her. If you asked me she was still a class above and of course there was the race hurdle that, due to my life experiences, seemed like an impassable mountain instead of a conquerable man made hurdle.
Regardless, we still had this thing about looking out for each other. I was constantly making sure she was always included and involved in whatever we did and I didn't hold back on my opinions of her boyfriends either. Whenever all of us went out partying, meanwhile, Crystal acted like my mother counting my beers and/or shots and then making sure I got home ok. She was even more motherly when it came to the girls I dated. I could bring by a girl who scored a 9.99 on a scale of ten and Crystal could and would find that 0.01 and hammer me on it until the cows went home. It annoyed me at the time but deep down it was nice knowing she had my back.
When I turned nineteen I got promoted to bartender and as I excelled there, everybody pretty much shelved the little brother routine and treated me like an adult. Everybody except Crystal. She still spoke to me sometimes like I didn't know shit and made sure I knew that she controlled our interactions. It was as if in her eyes I wasn't a peer yet and that disrespect to my emerging manhood pissed me off. It wasn't overbearing, however, and in no way did it define our relationship because she was otherwise always sweet and generous.
Still, however, that didn't stop her from commenting on every "trashy white girl" that came in to see me while religiously giving me the dos and don'ts of how to handle a female. She also relished jamming me up with my girlfriends by walking up to the bar and adding "baby" to my name or inquiring "we still on for later?" in their presence. Then she would just wink at me and walk away giggling leaving me with a suspicious and agitated girlfriend. Having dished out so much of the same shit myself, however, all I could do was laugh and take it like a man.
Our relationship changed forever one night when about two or three weeks after my 20th birthday Crystal asked me if I could give her a ride home after work. Having hooked each other up in this capacity several times before I didn't think twice and told her no problem. When we pulled up to her apartments at around 11pm Crystal flashed me a devilish grin and asked
"Want to come inside and burn one with me?"
Never one to pass up a free buzz I replied "Most definitely!"
We went inside her apartment where she lived alone and fired up while we talked and drank some beers. I was sitting on her leather sofa while she reclined on the floor against it. Although this was the first time I ever partied with her solo, I still was in buddy mode and not even remotely thinking about pussy. Well, maybe a little but the truth was that she still intimidated me and as stoned as I was, buddy mode was the path of least resistance so I took it.
We burned another J and were in the midst of laughing our asses off when Crystal excused herself and said she would be right back. When she came back my buddy mode took a fatal hit as the vision of Crystal in a white satin robe greeted my eyes.
With each step she took towards me everything began changing. There was an aura building with each stride as she got closer and closer and my eyes drank in her luscious curves and newly exposed brown flesh. The plutonic atmosphere was fading replaced by a tension that was both uncomfortable and exhilarating at the same time. I wasn't the only one feeling it as Crystal's demeanor went from slap happy to reserved as she noticed my inspection and walked towards me nervously like she was naked already.
She slid by me and then sat down on the sofa next to me and I could smell the sweet remnants of her perfume mixed with sweat after a hard nights work. That aroma, plus the contrast between her rich brown skin and the white robe, ignited a desire in me I had not felt since puberty. I had been intensely sexual with several white and Asian girls by then but seeing Crystal like that made me feel like I never had. It was as if I tapped back into the pure lust and agonizing curiosity of my adolescence. Nobody but my first ever brought that out in me and the culprit was obviously Crystal's sweet ebony skin and the sudden possibility that I could have it.
I never personally ruled out black girls before but as I said, my life experiences had. The interracial taboo back then was real and the dirty little secret was and is that both sides psychologically preached it and enforced it. I had seen it and heard it from both sides and like many others I just conformed out of convenience. I gawked at beautiful black girls but it never occurred to me that they might be interested in me. I took for granted that because I was white it was a moot point. Thus, I never mentally explored the possibilities.
