Рот Уайт - 400 Days of Oppression

“You’re fired!” he yelled back and then I heard him laugh. His laughter was worse than any insult he could have hurled at me. I wanted to crawl in a hole and die.

I stormed out of the bar. That was it. The last straw. Fuck this. I walked back to the bus stop. I was done. I had a decision to make. I could either go back to the plantation, as Kenyatta suggested, or I could say fuck the whole thing, as Angela suggested.

An hour later, when I walked up the steps of Kenyatta’s home and opened the front door, I was still undecided. It was the sound of the headboard smacking the wall, the moans and screams coming from Kenyatta’s bedroom, that made up my mind.

He was fucking her. I walked in and caught him, fucking his ex-wife. Fucking her hard and angry. Crushing her into the mattress with each stroke. His ass was poised in the air, preparing for the down stroke, that beautiful, muscular ass I loved so much, poised there. Her legs tossed over his shoulders, her moans of pain and pleasure echoing from everywhere.

He had been fucking her all along. I don’t know why I was surprised. I would have had to be a fool to think he wasn’t. But, I had been that fool. Even as I was lying on a bed of straw in the backyard, as I was being whipped and almost raped at Mistress Delia’s farm, pulling a plow and picking grapes. As I was being humiliated day after day, walking the streets with this damned tattoo on my face, I had believed every second that there would be a happily-ever-after for Kenyatta and I. I had believed that he would love me and protect me and be all those things a man was supposed to be according to the romance novels and romantic comedies.

Angela spotted me first and the look of guilt on her face confirmed everything.

“Oh, shit!”

She pushed Kenyatta off her and pulled the sheets up to her chin in some ridiculous show of false modesty. I had fucked this woman. I licked her pussy and she licked mine. What did she think she was hiding that I had not already seen? But she wasn’t hiding her body, she was holding up a shield, protecting herself with the only thing she had, a thin sheet. Kenyatta, however, was unfazed. He stood, naked, cock still hard and bobbing in the air like a divining rod. He held out his arms for me.

“Come join us.”

That’s when I found my voice.

“NIGGERRRRRRRR!” I screamed it loud and long. Then I screamed it again.

I picked up whatever I could find off the dresser and threw it at him as I repeated it over and over again. “NIGGER! NIGGER! NIGGEEEEEEERRRRRR!”

Kenyatta rushed across the room, raised his hand, and slapped me to the floor. He didn’t slap me as a master slapping his willing slave. There was nothing safe or sane about it. Perhaps there never had been. I had been slapped like this by men before. There was anger in his eyes and in his heart. It hurt me more than anything else I’d endured during those long arduous months of servitude. I turned and walked out, Kenyatta chased behind me, apologizing, begging me to stay. I guess the safe word didn’t matter anymore.

“Okay! Okay! Wait! Forget about the experiment. It’s over. I don’t care about the safe word. I’ll marry you, okay? I’ll marry you!”

He was standing there in the doorway as I walked out onto the porch, down the front steps and down the walkway toward my car. He was naked, beautiful, but somehow pathetic, diminished, and not merely because his cock had shriveled. I could see him now clearly for what he was, a sad, lonely, angry man who was full of self-loathing.

His ancestors had been through horrors and atrocities that most people could scarcely imagine, let alone survive. From the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and Jim Crow, through the civil rights movement, right up to the insidious institutionalized racism that holds so many of his people in economic dungeons to this day. Black people in America have suffered what no race of people should have ever had to endure, but he hadn’t. Kenyatta had never been a slave. He had never been through segregation. He was handsome, successful, and should have been happy. But he would never be, because he clearly hated himself. I pitied him now, and I could never marry him.

“Goodbye, Kenyatta.”

I turned my back, shaking my head, as the tears began to flow. I kept my head held high as I strode down that walkway to the sidewalk, sobbing openly, heartbroken. I felt hollow inside, shattered and gutted. But I was me again. I’d been here before. I was no one’s slave anymore. I was no one’s second-class citizen. The tattoo would fade. I’d get a job, and my life would resume. I’d come back from heartache after heartache and I would come back from this one. What Kenyatta put me through, would always be a part of me. Like it or not, he had taught me a lot about race and racism. Things I would never forget. He’d literally scarred these lessons into my flesh. Perhaps I owed him for that...but fuck him.

I didn’t know where my car keys were. Kenyatta had taken them from me when we first began this sadistic game. I didn’t care. I kept walking past my car, down the street, to the nearest bus stop. I sat there, seesawing from relief, to anger, to overwhelming sadness. I didn’t know what I should do next, then I cautiously probed my cheek with my fingertips. It was swollen and still felt warm to the touch from where Kenyatta had slapped me. My lip was swollen as well and I could taste blood in my mouth. I sighed deeply, pulled out my cell phone, and called 911.

I sat down at an outdoor café in South Beach, sipping a mimosa and waiting on a shrimp cocktail. The tattoo had faded away months ago. I was back working for the school district after cutting my hiatus short. My life was almost back to normal.

I pressed charges against Kenyatta for slapping me and took out a restraining order against him. Angela called me a few times to beg me to reconsider. She even threatened me on more than one occasion until I recorded one of her more hostile phone calls and had her arrested for making terrorist threats. That was four months ago, and I haven’t heard from either of them since.

The waitress brought my shrimp cocktail, and I made a mental note to leave her a big tip. I took another sip of my mimosa and was just about to dig into the shrimp cocktail, when a familiar silhouette caught my attention. He was across the street at a used bookstore. He wore a white shirt and a red tie with the sleeves rolled up like a politician on the campaign trail. There was a woman on his arm, a tall blonde with big tits, wide hips, and a big round ass. Kenyatta’s type. He reached over and patted the woman on her ass. I could hear her giggle from across the street.

When I saw the collar around her neck, the same one I had worn, I felt a twinge of jealousy. Then I spotted the book in his hand. I couldn’t read the title from where I was, but I didn’t need to. I had seen it so many times before. When he opened it and began to read from it to the tall blonde, a chill raised over my skin. He was doing it again. He had found another victim for his twisted mind games, another fool.

I reached into my wallet and pulled out two twenties to cover the bill, then I stood and began walking across the street. I reached into my purse one more time. Living alone in the city was scary sometimes. I had long ago taken to carrying protection. I felt the familiar weight of it in my hand as I approached the two of them. I had been submissive for far too long. It was time to end the game for real. And this time, there would be no safe word.

Special thanks to R.J. Cavender and Marc Ciccarone for having faith in this project. Thanks to Monica O’Rourke for her invaluable editing advice. Tod Clark for his keen eye for the little things. And Christie White for the inspiration.