Authors note: If you are one of the readers who got bent out of shape over my story "The Racist" I'd advise you to skip this one.
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My dick had gotten me in trouble before, but it had never before brought me to the edge of disaster. And disaster is just what I was seeing as I listened to the black woman who was planning on making it happen.
It had started four months ago. I had just started a new job and on my third day at work I was walking down a hallway and I tripped and stumbled into a woman coming from the other direction. The collision had caused her to drop the papers that she was carrying. As I tried to help her pick them up she was muttering, more to herself than me, "Stupid, clumsy honky asshole." Until she said that I hadn't even paid any attention to the fact that she was black. I had grown up in a fairly cosmopolitan neighborhood and I had learned at an early age that skin color didn't mean diddily squat - it was the person inside the skin that mattered. I handed her the papers I'd picked up, apologized and then said, "I don't mind the honky part, and I may be a bit clumsy, but I am not stupid and I am not an asshole. However, even if I was I would prefer it to being a racist like you" and I walked off and left her standing there.
Two days later I was sitting in the company cafeteria having lunch and reading the latest issue of Newsweek when out of the corner of my eye I noticed someone come up and stand by my table. I looked up and saw that it was the black woman that I had stumbled into. She said, "Why did you call me a racist?"
"Because you are one."
"What gives you the right to make a statement like that?"
"Your actions."
"My actions? That's bullshit, you don't even know me so how can you say that?"
"I'll answer your question with a question. When I helped you pick up your papers and then handed them to you what if instead of apologizing I'd have said, "Here's your papers nigger." Would you have taken that as a racist remark?"
I saw anger flash in her eyes and I said, "Damned straight you would have and I took your honky remark the same way. You could have said, "Clumsy oaf" or you might have said, "Clumsy clod", but you didn't. There was no hesitation on your part, you went right to "honky" because that is your mind set."
She stared at me for a second or two and then she said, "Okay, I'm a racist, but it wasn't very gentlemanly of you to point it out" and she turned and walked away.
One of the guys in my department had witnessed that little scene and after she had gone he had come up to me and said, "You had best watch yourself around that one. She is trouble with a capital "T". I thanked him for his warning and went back to reading my magazine.
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To understand what happened next you have to understand a little about me. I am what some would call a cockhound, a man of loose morals, a pussy lover, or a lying cheat and an unfaithful bastard. All too true I'm sad to say. I'm married to a great woman and I love her to death, but if I see a chance for some pussy on the side I'm after it in a flash. True to my nature I was sniffing after half of the women in the office with varying degrees of success and one miserable failure - my teeth were still rattling from the slap I got. I'd been there just over three months and one day I was sitting in the cafeteria when the black woman (I still didn't know her name) sat down on the chair opposite me. I looked over at her and said, "And to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"
"Nothing important. I just wanted to give everyone else in here to see two sides of the same coin."
"I'm afraid you lost me on that one."
"It is really quite simple. A coin has two sides, but there is something different on each side. Take a dime for instance. On one side you have Roosevelt's head and on the other you have the Torch of Liberty, but it doesn't matter which side you are looking at, it is still a dime."
"And your point?"
"Imagine this table is a coin, you on one side and me on the other. Black on one side white on the other, but it doesn't matter which side you are looking at you are still seeing the same thing."
"And that is?"
"Racists - one black and one white, but racists just the same" and she got up and walked away.
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Now I don't have a racist bone in my body. I may be a lot of things, but a racist isn't one of them. I stewed over what she'd said for the rest of the day and most of the evening. The next day I didn't wait for lunchtime to come around, but I went straight to her office when I got to work. Fortunately she was alone and I got right to it. "I am not now, nor have I ever been a racist."
"Of course you are."
"And just how do you arrive at that conclusion?"
"Simple really. You have chased after every woman that works here except me."
"Of course I haven't made a move on you for Christ's sake. You are prejudiced against whites and by your actions you have shown that you don't even like me. Why would you expect me to take a run at you?"
"Bullshit! You avoid me because I'm black and that makes you just as much a racist as I am."
"Your skin color has nothing to do with it and you know it."
"What I know is that you avoid me and so I have to assume that you are afraid that the color will rub off."
Suddenly the light bulb went off over my head. "I see what is going on here. I was warned that you are trouble just looking to happen and I think I've just figured it out. Goad the white boy into making a pass at you so you can turn him in for sexual harassment. Well this boy ain't biting lady" and I turned to leave.
She laughed and said, "That's it closet bigot, run away."
I turned back to her, "Closet bigot? Okay sweetie, I'm calling your bluff. I'm stopping at the Rockyard for a beer after work. Be there and let's just see if I'm a bigot. But you won't be there will you. Wouldn't do for Little Miss Racist to be seen out in public with the white oppressor, now would it?' I turned and left her office.
