This, That, and the Other

I am unofficially participating in this year’s A to Z Challenge. My theme this year is girlfriends.

P is for Patrice H.

Patrice was my first older woman and my first African American woman. I was 23 and she was 30. I had been assigned my first job after completing my six-month management training rotation as the supervisor of a group of customer service representatives. She was the manager of the claims correspondence unit. So while my staff answered phones, hers responded to letters.

A few days into my new job, she asked me to come to her office so she could tell me about what her people did and discuss how my phone reps and her correspondents could work more effectively together.

Patrice was a tall, thin, striking woman and I appreciated her enthusiasm in helping me in my new role. We agreed that we should schedule an a hour a week to exchange ideas and information. At our third such meeting she invited me to dinner at her apartment, which was less than a mile from the office.

There are two vivid memories that stood out about that night. One, she was an excellent cook. Two, she was an excellent amateur photographer. She had mostly black and white photos in frames hung on the walls throughout her apartment. All of her subjects were beautiful black people, male and female, and mostly nudes. It was quite erotic.

After dinner, I helped her clean up the dishes. And then she asked me if I would like to model for her. I pointed at one of the nudes of a muscular black male and said, “I’m a skinny white kid. I’m afraid you’ll be very disappointed.” But she said she’d never done a photo shoot with a white man before, and she was sure she wouldn’t be disappointed.

I followed into a bedroom that was set up as a photo studio. I started out being fully clothed and then she directed me to remove my shirt, then my pants, until I was just down to my T-shirt and tightie-whities. Then they came off. I was very self-conscious and obviously aroused and she was telling me to move this way and turn that way and the camera kept clicking away.

Afterward, we had some incredible sex and she invited me to come over a few nights later so she could show me the developed photographs. When I went back, she showed me a bunch of photos and I don’t know how she did it, but she made me look really sexy. And she had even mounted, framed, and hung one of the photos of me on her wall. I was blown away.

Patrice and I had weekly dinners at her place regularly over the next several months, but one night after dinner she told me that that dinner would be our last time. When I asked why, she told me she was pregnant. I knew it couldn’t have been me because I always wore a condom. But that’s when she told me that she had a fiancé and he was the father.

That explained a lot. She would never agree to go out with me on weekends and dinners were just once a week except for that first week. Before I left, she handed me an envelope with prints of about a half-dozen photos she had taken of me. As I was leaving her apartment, she hugged and kissed me and thanked me for being her white boy toy.

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