[Author's note: This started as the first chapter of an interracial dominance book but those pesky characters turned out to be genuinely in love. Anyway, here's where the story went.]
I glanced at the clock, looked around the house, making sure everything was in place, and then went upstairs to the bathroom to shower and get ready. My bride would be home in less than an hour and she likes me to look my best.
I showered quickly, scrubbing my face, using the purple shampoo I use once a week to keep my white hair from turning yellow, and then did my body. I had long since accepted the pot belly I had put on suddenly at about 60, but I still hated it as I held it up to make sure my pubic hair, cock, and balls were nice and clean. Then I bent and did my legs and ass. That's another thing I hate about nearing three-quarters of a century, my arthritis has my toes knobby and ugly. At least my hands, although they troubled me from time to time, didn't do that.
Standing in front of the mirror, preparing to shave, trimming around the goatee she liked me to wear, I took inventory. All in all, not bad for 70. I still had all of my hair, well, most of it, it wasn't as thick as it had once been but it was still curly and had that nice silver-grey color many say looks good. My shoulders were still pretty good, but I had lost muscle mass from my chest. My nipples seemed to have grown larger in the past few years, but I didn't have moobs, you know, those man boobs some men develop after a certain age.
My belly, a pot belly rather than a beer belly, made me look almost pregnant if I turned sideways but it was still firm. Hell, I might not be able to do 400 situps anymore, but I figured if I had to I could still take a punch. The repair on my umbilical hernia still held, but my belly button was a bit of an outie.
Below my belly, the triangle of my pubic hair was still dark although streaked with grey these days. My cock was still stubby, as it always had been, but pretty thick. My scrotum hadn't sagged like many men do after a certain age. My balls were still tight against my body. My legs were no longer the distance runner's legs they had once been, but they were still pretty good.
All in all, not bad.
I shaved, carefully outlining the goatee, brushed my teeth, and put in my partial upper bridge, something uncomfortable but she said if I left it out I looked like white trash. I put on fresh boxers, light grey slacks, brightly patterned socks, and my leather loafers. I finished with a pale pink Oxford cloth button-down shirt, a brightly patterned tie, and a dark grey sports coat that contrasted nicely with the slacks.
I checked myself in the mirror one last time before I went down to mix her drink. I carefully measured a double shot of Flecha Azul premium tequila, a shot of premium natural lime juice, and a light shot of the Cointreau Triple Sec into the stainless shaker half full of crushed ice, shook it, and strained it into the stemmed double bowl glass with the salted rim. I hooked a slice of lime over the rim of the glass and then took the fresh Margarita into the front room to wait for her.
My wife teaches three days a week at the local community college and is working on her doctoral dissertation the rest of the time. But I can always count on her being home at four o'clock sharp. She says she needs stability in her life and I give her that.
I told Alexa to start on our
coming home
playlist, shuffled, and heard Peggy Lee's incomparable version of
Fever
softly through our Bose surround sound system. I closed my eyes, listening, enjoying, and thinking that retirement was turning out WAY better than I had ever imagined it would.
I heard the soft burble of her car pulling into the driveway, the vintage Austin Healy 3000 making those wonderful English sports car sounds. The car is as much hobby as transportation, but I had it running well for now and she enjoyed it, making all of the bruises and cut knuckles worth it.
I got up, she likes to be greeted at the door, and a line from an old Tom Petty song flashed through my mind. The song is called
The Wrong Thing to Do
, and the line is "She's tall and blonde and 23, put on the earth to get the better of me." Which is funny, really, because my wife is certainly tall at 5'11" in bare feet and well over six feet in the high heels she liked to wear, but she was most definitely not blonde.
Latitia is the very personification of a "black" woman. She has the broad nose and thick lips along with the dark milk chocolate-colored skin that makes it clear that no white overseer ever contaminated her gene pool. She looked, in other words, like her great, great, great, great, great grandmother must have looked when she stepped off of the slave ship in Charleston or Savannah or Mobile or New Orleans. Her eyes are dark brown with outrageously white sclera (the whites of her eyes, a term I had learned long ago in a Human Anatomy and Physiology class). Her teeth are not bleached although when she smiles the contrast with her dark lips makes them look like they are.
At 25, she is almost exactly one-third my age now but she had been, and I suppose this is why that line from the song tends to stick in my mind so often, 23 when we got married.
Well, okay, let me back up. I think I may have jumped into this a bit abruptly. I do that sometimes these days.
I was a widower, to use the archaic term, when Latitia came into my life. I had been happily married and planning on growing old with my wife of 22 years. She was my third wife and, well, I always assumed, my last. Then I woke up one morning and she didn't.
Just like that. Oh, I did it right, called 911, and did CPR, but she was already cold to my touch and I knew it was too late. But I kept it up right until the paramedics arrived and then rode with them to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.
I mourned for a year and then I was starting to get out. Well, I didn't do the dating sites or anything, but I did become a regular at the senior citizen center dances in two towns and the occasional American Legion or Elks Lodge dance too. I wasn't sure what I wanted, but I knew I enjoy women too much to be alone.
Lightning struck at one of the senior center dances.
When she walked in it was obvious that she was
the
girl, well, okay, young woman but a girl to most of us sitting at the stag table like it was the high school dance and we didn't quite know how to ask the girls to dance. She was tall and black and beautiful and all I could think of was that old song -
Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger
.
She didn't even have a chance to sit before I was on my feet. I did a soft prayer of thanks as the band started up a not-too-bad rendition of the old Bobby Vinton song
Blue Velvet
.
I didn't say anything, just offered my hand, and when I saw that gorgeous smile I knew, right then, that I was lost.
I monopolized her for the night although she did accept offers from others to dance, drawing angry looks from the regulars of the female persuasion.
"May I drive you home?" I asked as the band wound down for the last time. It was a little after 10:00 at night. Things don't run very late at the center.
"I'd rather you drove me somewhere we could get a drink," she said and there was that smile again.
I courted her for a month before she finally said she thought it was time to spend a night together.
We were married two months later. It was an interesting day. The wedding was at her church and, it turned out, when you marry a black woman in a black church you need to be ready to meet a lot of black people and deal with a lot of suspicion.
Her grandmother, the perfect black grandmother who made me think of Carl's "Nana" from Mike and Molly had "the talk" with me. "Baby," she said, she seemed to call every male baby although her tone could mean anything from "I'm going to kill you now," to "you are the sweetest thing in my life." Right then the tone was "listen closely boy, because this is very important."
Anyway, she said, "baby, I'm not sure about this but Latitia says she loves you and you're obviously in love with her so I give you my blessing."
When I started to say reply she said, "I'm sorry, did you think I was done talking?"
Her tone and her accent were what I think of as pure African-American. Not the ghetto bullshit or the gangsta rap so many people associate with black people. It's hard to write out the way she sounded but I'll try.
"Ah'm sawry, did you think ah was dun tahkin'?" That still doesn't do it justice but it's close.
I smiled, took her hands, and said, "forgive a rude white boy."
Which made her laugh, a great belly laugh that made me laugh back.
"Now listen then, white boy," she said, but she was smiling now, "you have my blessing but," and her entire, well, "presence" changed, she was serious now in her face and her tone and even in subtle shifts in her body language, "if my granddaughter ever comes to me and says you have hurt her I will send four strapping young men to drag your well beaten white ass before me and I will personally cut your throat."
I still held her hands.
I smiled, bent, kissed her lightly on the forehead, and said, "Miss Mamyjo (it's pronounced "may me joe"), I believe you and I hope you believe me when I say you'll have no reason to do anything but like me."
"Oh, I like you fine," she said, "but you have to admit this is a bit odd."
Anyway, I survived the wedding, jumped the broom, did it all.
And now here I was, two years later, on my knees, taking Latitia's shoes off and rubbing her feet while she sipped at her margarita and sighed as my thumbs found little knots of tension and I worked them out.
Her feet, like the rest of her, are big. She's a size 10 shoe. But she enjoyed this little attention and I enjoyed offering it to her.
She finished her drink while we watched the news on TV, well, she watched and I listened. My attention was on her feet.
Then I stood and held her hand while we padded into the dining room. I seated her, as I did every night, holding the chair and scooting it forward when she sat, and then brought out the dinner I had made. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, corn, and a second margarita for her. A beer for me if it matters.
As we ate she regaled me with stories of her day. With a Master's Degree, she was limited to teaching freshman history and at the Junior College level she had great stories about the stupidity of students. And, she tells a great story.
