Chapter 1
Deanna's Story
I met Lewis a few years ago at work. I had been working at my job as a customer service rep for about a year when Lewis was hired for the same position. We work for a large company and the floor where we work has about a hundred reps just like us in cubicles answering phone calls and helping people.
At first, I took little notice of Lewis because he worked on a different team than me. When a new employee joins the company, they usually walk him around making quick introductions but I do remember thinking that Lewis looked relatively attractive for a black man. Now before you write me off as a complete racist, let me just say that I was born and raised in a part of the country where we didn't see many blacks and I had little direct contact with them as a people. That said, I never found them all that attractive, even the movie stars that were known for their looks, like Denzel and Halle. No offense, I just think that white people look better, so we'll just leave it at that.
Like I was saying, I didn't have much cause to think about Lewis until I got promoted and I found myself in charge of the team that included you know who. I wasn't the least bit concerned because I don't have any animosity at all toward black people, and I quickly came to appreciate Lewis as a talented and conscientious worker and a nice man as well.
One of my duties as a manager is to meet with each of my people once a month in closed-door one-on-one coaching sessions. For the first few months, Lewis and I kept everything on a very professional level and limited the hour to work-related issues and his evaluation reports.
Then things began to change. I really can't say that Lewis started hitting on me or being inappropriate in any way because that didn't happen at all. But after the first few business-only meetings in my office, near the end of one session, he just started to make small talk with me, asking me about my husband and my life outside the office. We didn't dwell on anything too long, but at each meeting, the business talk ended a little earlier and the personal talk got just a little more personal. Lewis made me feel very comfortable, mostly because he's a really nice guy and seemed to be genuinely interested in me as a person, not just his manager.
After almost a year of monthly meetings and the occasional chit chat in the company break room with other colleagues present, the conversations started to take on a little bit of a sexual tone. There was nothing blatant or in poor taste, nothing to arouse my suspicions about his intentions, just a friendly banter that became more and more friendly.
One spring afternoon, several managers from our department went to a bar with an outdoor seating area for drinks as the weather turned pleasant after a long winter. I tagged along (which I rarely do, not being much of a drinker) and we ran into a group of reps that were already sitting at several tables they had pushed together. I had a little too much white wine and not enough food when I ran into Lewis, who showed up late but looked very happy to see me. We talked and joked around for a couple of hours and had a great time until I became suddenly aware that everyone else from our office had left. I don't know why it took so long for me to realize that I was essentially alone with Lewis, but the realization that I was having a marvelous conversation with one of my employees, who just happened to be young and black and how about that, he was pretty good looking after all. The night air had chilled considerably and we went into the bar to pay the tab when, in my semi-drunken haze, I realized that I was getting some looks from people that were like 'what the hell is that white woman doing with that black guy?' types of looks. Which kind of pissed me off a little bit.
