LOVE AT WAFFLE HOUSE
JOHNNY
I love Waffle House breakfasts. I go almost every morning. My wife doesn't like to eat breakfast until about ten o'clock. She says the smell of breakfast cooking makes her sick. So, I go to breakfast by myself. But I am never alone.
I am a regular. I have a meal named after me. Being a regular means I know all the waitresses. I flirt mercilessly. I get away with it because I tip well, and I am old, bald and fat enough to be considered harmless.
I try not to have a favorite waitress. You'd be surprised how nasty they can get if they think you like one more than the other, especially when tipping. I have a favorite though: Deidra. She is almost six feet tall, two inches taller than me. She is thin, but not skinny. Decent breasts and ass but not traffic stoppers. Pretty face. She is bi-racial. Reminds me of Marilyn McCoo of the Fifth Dimension. (If you never heard of them, that means I'm a lot older than you.)
We have a special connection because she has a son who is autistic. I retired from a program that helped families and persons with disabilities including autism. I was able to help her get some Respite services to give her and her husband relief periodically. Her current husband is not the father of the child. The fact that he married her knowing she had an autistic child puts him up on a high esteem shelf in my estimation.
The incident that changed our relationship occurred when I observed she seemed sadder than usual. I asked her if something was wrong with her son. She said no, it had to do with a bill they we unable to pay because Social Security messed up her son's monthly SSI check. Unfortunately, in my experience, that happens far too often. I told her that I had a proposition.
She looked at me strangely when I said that. It was like I could read her mind. Deidra was well aware I thought she was sexy. She was thinking I was going to offer money for sex. Although she stared at me, she didn't say anything. I went on to offer her a no-interest loan. Deidra looked relieved but said she would have to talk to her husband about it.
I gave a lot of thought about her reaction. On one hand, I was glad that I was considered a sexual threat to her. Hey, it was something for me to be considered sexual in any way to a beautiful young woman. Would I have offered her money for sex? If I knew she would be interested, Hell yes! If I knew she would be disgusted by it, 'I'm not that kind of guy.' Yep, I'm that big an asshole.
When I saw her the next day, I asked her to come over since there was no one else seated near me at the low bar, my 'assigned' seat. I told her of my assumption of her assumption when I told her I had a proposition yesterday. I said I would not offer her money for sex for several reasons, but the one I thought she should be aware of is that I could never have enough money to offer that I thought would equal the worth of being able to make love with her. Then I got up, paid my bill, and left.
I was scared that I may have messed up my friendship with her. The next morning, she was not working the section where I was sitting. She did not look my way or join in the usual "JOHNNNNNY" greeting I get. I ate my breakfast and was beginning to gather up my stuff when Deidra came over and left a note where I was sitting. I picked it up without looking and made my exit.
Inside my van, I opened the message: "2:15, Starbucks." I looked back into Waffle House and saw her looking at me. I gave her a thumbs up. Then I started worrying. I had never met one of the waitresses outside of WH before. Oh, I had seen several by coincidence at Walmart, but I had never had an appointment with one. I wondered what the significance was to her. I wondered even more about what I wanted the significance to be. I was prepared to listen and accept a wide range of possibilities.
I was nervous as hell waiting for her that afternoon. Deidra came in about 2:20, saw me, walked over and sat down. I asked if she wanted some coffee. She said she didn't have time.
"Johnny, I cried after you left yesterday. It wasn't so much what you said, but what it unleashed about what I was feeling. I decided that I have a proposition for YOU. I would like you to seriously consider it. Whether you agree or not, you must, repeat MUST not tell anyone what I said, not even your wife. Probably, especially your wife."
A little shocked, I responded, "I agree. I will not tell anyone."
She looked around as if to check that anyone was close enough to overhear. "I know we've been friends, but there's something I need that normally you don't ask a friend for. Johnny, I want to make love with you."
In my mind, my reaction was "Holy shit. Jackpot. Don't blow this asshole." I shut up and listened.
"My mother was white and my father black. I was raised black. I was teased by both blacks and whites growing up. I couldn't wait to leave home. I didn't care who I dated in high school. I just wanted to find someone who could take me away. I didn't mind putting out for any guy I thought might be a possibility. I finally found a white boy that had a good part-time job as a carpenter. He would have a good paying job after high school no matter where he lived. So, I let him get me pregnant. Taking responsibility won out over his family's objection about marrying a nigger, so we got married. Soon after graduation, we moved.
Our son was born. He was handsome. We were a happy family for a while. I began to sense something was wrong when our son was about a year old. My husband didn't know enough about babies to notice. By age three, we had the diagnosis: autism. I don't know which affected my husband the most: having a 'defective' child or having his family telling him that the child was God's punishment for having married outside his race. Whatever the reason, I no longer had a husband and my son no longer had a father.
"In my family whenever a lot of shit happens, you head to church. In our case, it was Freeman Chapel, C.M.E., typical evangelical black church. I didn't find God there, but I found JaQuan.
"The church nursery tried to keep my son during the service, but that didn't last long. He was out of control. I kept him with me in the congregation, but often I had to take him out. One Sunday, he was particularly bad, I took him out and I just started bawling. JaQuan came out and asked if he could help. I found out that he was an aide in the autism class my son was in at school. He almost immediately calmed my son down.
"I asked him how the hell he did that. He said, 'Your son and I are buddies. We do things for each other.' I was instantly in love. We started dating and six months later we got married. I thought my life was turning around for the better. Before long, I found out that it had only taken a side road.