BARRY

I think that my marriage is over.  I can’t be absolutely certain until I talk with my wife, but I think that when I saw her get in that Cadillac and drive away she was telling me goodbye.  There is a saying that you hear from time to time, “No good deed goes unpunished” and it would certainly seem to be the case where I’m concerned. 

Janice and I have been married just over eight years.  Most of that eight years Janice was a stay at home mom.  When the two kids started school it left her with a lot of free time on her hands.  I make excellent money so Janice didn’t need to go to work, but she did want something to do so she volunteered to work for several charities.  I got used to her being gone one or two nights a week as she became more and more involved with her volunteer work.  A year went by and Janice was appointed to various committees and the committees claimed more and more of her time.  I found myself being dragged from one charitable function after another and it got to the point where I finally had to buy a tux rather than keep on renting them.  There were endless fifty and one hundred-dollar a plate dinners to benefit this worthy cause and that worthwhile charity and I came to hate the taste of chicken.  Then came the day that Janice was made the chairwoman of a committee (which shall remain nameless to protect the identities of the guilty parties) and things got even more hectic.

Another year went by and along the way Janice picked up a Woman of the Year award and several other awards for her civic accomplishments and our picture became an almost weekly occurrence on the society pages of the local newspapers.  All of that exposure made other charities and fund raising groups seek out Janice to get her help and soon Janice was spending almost every night of the week working for one group or another.   Saturday night usually meant that the two of us would be at some affair or other to support some worthy cause.  I was getting pretty tired of it and I finally told her that she needed to cut back on what she was doing so that the two of us could spend some time together alone.  I pointed out that our sex life had become almost non-existent and that I was unhappy about it.  Janice promised me that she would eliminate some of her activities, but before she could do it she was tapped to be the chairwoman of the committee that put on the local charities biggest money raising event of the year.  The event had been put on every year for the past fifteen years and had never failed to raise tons of money.  It was a date auction.  Every year one of the city’s largest and most popular restaurants donated ten dinners, complete with all drinks for the auction.  Then ten lovely young women volunteers were auctioned off with the dinners.  The winning bidder got a dinner date with the woman he had bid on and a local limo service donated a limo to pick the couple up and take them to dinner and then take them back home.  Several of those dates had ended in marriage for the two people involved.  It was the social event of the year and it was up to Janice and her committee to see that it went off without a hitch.

It came apart on the night of the event.  Janice and I had already arrived and I was sitting and sipping a vodka martini as Janice ran around attending to last minute details.  She finally managed to find time to sit down with me and have a drink and as we were sitting there Toni came up and sat down with us. 

“We have a problem Janice.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Four of the girls who volunteered for the auction have called and cancelled.”

“Why?”

“Sue Wilson is stuck in Kansas City.  The airport is weathered in and she can’t get a flight out.  Mary Miller is in the hospital with a burst appendix and two others are down with the flu that has been going around.”

“Oh shit!  It’s too late to find replacements.  Why the hell does this have to happen the year I’m involved with this?”

“Well, a couple of us have come up with a fix for the problem.  It’s drastic, but we can make it work if we can get some cooperation.”

“From who?”

Tina looked over at me and said, “From you and your husband.”

“What do you mean?” Janice asked.

“Liz got her fiancée to agree to let her be one of the replacements and I talked my boyfriend into letting me be on.  Helen’s husband is willing to let her do it, but only on one condition.”

“And that condition?”

“That you take the fourth spot.”

“Why me?”

“A married woman has never been auctioned off before and he doesn’t want Helen to be the first, and more specifically, the only one.  He says people might take it wrong if it were only Helen, but he thinks that if there are two of you things will be okay.”

I knew that Janice would be in a panic to save her event so I wasn’t surprised when both women turned to me.  “Oh no” I said, “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” Tina wanted to know.  “It’s only a dinner date.  The limo picks her up, takes her to the restaurant, she has drinks, dinner, dances a little and the limo brings her home and drops her at your door.”

“I’m sorry girls, but I can’t see letting my wife go out on a date with another man.  Get someone else on the committee to do it.”

“Like who, Angela Parker?  Who in their right mind would pay a dime to take her out?  Betty Pierpoint?  Sixty years old, blue hair and a face like a dried raisin?  Boy wouldn’t she bring in the big bucks.”

The two of them spent the next ten minutes hammering at me.  What the hell, it was for a good cause, right?  So I did my good deed for the charity and said okay.

After the cocktail hour dinner was served and during the entire meal not a word was said between Janice and me.  In fact Janice couldn’t even bring herself to look at me.  I’m pretty sure that she was having second thoughts about things, but was afraid to let me know it.  I figured that she was between a rock and a hard place - she knew I didn’t want her to do it, she was thinking she shouldn’t do it, but she couldn’t bear the thought that the night would be less than successful under her management.  After dinner the auction started and things seemed to be going smoothly.  The first eight young ladies were auctioned off for some pretty hefty amounts; the lowest went at eighteen hundred and the highest for twenty-three.  Then the auctioneer called for the next volunteer to come up to the auction stand.  There was a gasp from the crowd as Helen stood up and went to the auction block.  At least half the crowd there that night knew that Helen was married and her appearance on the stand caused quite a stir.  I was somewhat surprised when Helen only brought in eleven hundred.  I wondered if it was because she was married, was five years older than the previous eight young ladies or both.  Then it was Janice’s turn.  Her appearance on the stand caused just as big a stir as Helen’s did.  The bidding got off to a good start, but bogged down at a thousand dollars.  Then from the back of the room came a booming “Eleven hundred.”  When no one topped that offer I saw Janice look beseechingly at me and I knew what she was thinking - “Save me!” - was written all over her face.  The bidder in the back of the room was Jason North.

Some explanation here.  Janise is Southern born and bred.  Her family back home in South Carolina is a bit on the racist side and Janice went off to college with all the baggage that a family full of racists could give her.  Her four years in college went a long way toward modifying her attitudes toward minorities, but Janice still was never comfortable around them in a social context.  Jason was black.  Not only that, but Janice and Jason had a history.  Not much of one, but more than enough to make Janice nervous.  Jason and I used to work for the same company and at one company Christmas party Jason had asked Janice to dance and Janice had said no.  Janice had already danced with half of the men I work with and her refusal to dance with Jason was taken by him as a racial gesture.  Later that night there was another incident that cemented in Jason’s mind that Janice was a bigot.  Jason caught Janice underneath the mistletoe and kissed her.  Janice had been kissed under that piece of greenery by at least a dozen other men that night, but when Jason kissed her she shoved him away and ran to the ladies room.  Janice said that she suddenly had to pee, but Jason just knew that it was so she could wash the touch of him off of her.  Shortly after that Jason left the company to go into business for himself and now here he was trying to buy a date with a white woman he considered a closet racist.  And there was my wife, eyes pleading with me to do something to stop it.

I bid twelve hundred and then Jason and I swapped bids until Jason followed my bid of two thousand with a bid of twenty-five hundred and at that point I decided to bail out.  It was obvious to me that Jason was going to go as high as necessary to win and I couldn’t see spending a fortune just to take my own wife to dinner.  Besides, Janice needed to get over being nervous about being around minorities.  Maybe an evening of dinner and dancing with a black man would help her see that blacks were not the savages and barbarians that her parents had made them out to be. 

“Twenty-five once, twenty-five twice, going, going and gone for twenty-five hundred dollars” and the gavel fell.

The ride home was quiet and Janice didn’t say a word to me until we got into the house and then she let me have it.

“How could you let that asshole win?  How could you let that arrogant bastard have a date with me?”

“Whoa up there lady.  You seem to forget that we are not the Rockefellers or the Vanderbilt’s.  We may be well off, but we are by no means rich and it was obvious that Jason was going to keep on bidding until he won.  Not only that, but think of the possible scandal.  The most anyone has ever bid during one of those auctions was twenty-seven hundred.  What if Jason, and I’m sure he would have, had gone to three or even four thousand.  For a married woman?  How do you think that would have played around town?  Besides, you are the one who talked me into letting you do this.  Remember what you said?  “It’s only dinner, a few drinks and some dancing.  It isn’t like I’m going to have an affair or anything like that.”  You wanted your night to be a success and it was.  All you have to do now is have dinner with Jason and think about how his bid was the highest of the night and that your fund drive was a huge success.”

That wasn’t the end of it of course and things were pretty cool around our house for the next couple of days.

JASON

I couldn’t believe it.  I’d almost passed up on coming to this five hundred dollar a plate dinner.  Randy had worked on me for the better part of two weeks trying to talk me into attending the event.  And it wasn’t his, “Hey, you can get a date with a beautiful white chick” that finally convinced me.  No, it was the fact that it was the so-called “Social Event” of the year that brought me.  Meeting some of the people who attended the event might help me in my business.  That and the slim chance that I might get my picture in the society pages of the morning papers which would also help me out.  I was surprised to see Barry and his wife Janice sitting at the head table.  God, but she was one gorgeous woman.  Too bad she was a fucking bigot.  I was also surprised that dinner wasn’t another rubber chicken affair.  They actually served a pretty good prime rib and the drinks weren’t watered down either.  A couple of Rum and Cokes had me in a pretty mellow mood by the time the auction started.  I watched as one sexy looking white girl after another walked up front and was auctioned off for over a grand.  I shook my head and wondered what kind of fool would shell out that much money just to be able to take her out to dinner.  And dinner and a few dances were all he was going to get.  If one of those girls ever gave it up the resultant scandal would put and end to the charity affair.  Then came my biggest surprise of the evening.  Janise got up and moved to the auction block.  I sat there stunned as the bidding started.  Why was she doing this?  Why was Barry letting her do it?  I watched in fascination as men bid for the pleasure of just having dinner with this beautiful woman.  The bidding started to slow down and it looked like Janice was going to go for a measly thousand dollars.  This magnificent woman for only a grand?  Without even thinking about it I heard myself call out eleven hundred.  Janice looked my way and when she saw who it was who had bid on her I saw the fright come over her face.  I saw her look to Barry and I could read the look she gave him, “Don’t let the nigger get me Barry.”  That look did it.  I said to myself, “All right you bigoted bitch; I don’t care what it costs me you WILL be sitting across from me in that restaurant.  Then Barry and I started bidding against each other until he realized that I had no intention of quitting until I won.  After it was over I walked up to the head table and in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear I said, “I’m so glad that I won the pleasure of your company.  I’m free tomorrow, will that work for you?” 

I got a look that would crumble a stone statue, but everyone had heard me and so she had to answer, “No, tomorrow is not a good time for me.  Why don’t you give me a call and we will see what we can work out.” 

And give you time to find a way out?  Not on your life honey. 

“Well if tomorrow is out we can make it Friday.  That is the last day I will have available for the next couple of months.  If you can’t make it on Friday I’ll make it easy on you and withdraw my bid.” 

I saw her eyes dart around the table and she saw that every eye was on her and every ear was waiting to hear what she would say.  If she said Friday was not good for her she was through as far as her committee was concerned.  These people were not stupid, they would see right through her.  She looked back at me and I saw her accept her fate.  “Friday will work fine for me.” 

“Beautiful.  I’ll make the reservations and pick you up around seven.”

JANICE

I knew I was in trouble when I walked from the house and the black chauffeur got out and opened the limo door for me.  God - all alone in the car with two black men - it couldn’t have been any worse for me.  One was bad enough, but two?  When I settled down on the seat as close to the door and as far from Jason as I could get I told myself that I could get through the evening if I just kept my cool.  Damn Barry anyway; he could have kept me from this if he wasn’t so damned cheap.  It was hard on me making small talk with Jason.  I knew what he thought of me, but he was wrong. He didn’t know it of course, but then no one else did either, not even Barry.  Everyone knew my background; that my family were racists from the old school and that I had been brought up in their belief system and they all assumed that I naturally felt as my parents did.  Nothing could have been farther from the truth.  I hated my parents with a burning passion and if they were for something I was automatically against it and if they were against something I signed up for the committee that was fighting to legalize it.  Why the hatred?  Because my father sexually abused me and my mother knew about it and turned a blind eye.  She even went so far as to leave the house to “go shopping” when she knew it was happening.  The last time my father abused me was the day I left to go to college and I set off on that journey I was already thinking of what I could do that would someday punish both of my parents.

The opportunity came in my junior year.  I was dating one of the guys on the football team and one night we were supposed to meet at a party and when I got there he was drunk on his ass.  When the party ended it was up to me to get Jimmy home.  One of his team members offered to help me get him into the car and then out of the car at the dorm.  Afterwards we went for coffee.  Bobby was big, black and he had an infectious smile and before we left Denny’s I’d agreed to go out with him.  I wasn’t a virgin, but I wasn’t a round-heeled slut either.  No boy ever got me before the sixth date and no boy ever got a date after the third one unless I liked him a lot.  Bobby picked me up at seven and by eight-thirty he had already fucked me twice.  From that night on Bobby and I went at it hot and heavy and I made sure that my parents got plenty of pictures of the two of us together.  At Christmas I sent cards to all of mom and dads neighbors - something I did every year anyway - and in each card I included a picture of my fiancée and me hugging.  My parents and I became estranged and didn’t that just break my little heart.

At the beginning of our senior year I asked Bobby if he had given any thought to our future after graduation.

“Future?  You and me?  I’m afraid we don’t have a future Janice.” 

It seems Bobby had his future all mapped out.  Law school and then politics and a white wife was baggage he didn’t plan on carrying.  I was crushed and we were no longer a couple.  One night Bobby showed up at a party I was attending.  He smiled at me and I turned my back on him and grabbed the first guy who came along and pulled him out onto the dance floor.  He was a black guy and as we were dancing he bluntly asked, “Are you one of those white girls who fantasize about black cock?” 

Over his shoulder I saw Bobby watching us and anger at him shot through me.  “I don’t just fantasize baby, I lust after it.  Why do you think I grabbed you?  You want to get lucky tonight?”

 “You serious girl?” 

“You got a place where we can go?”

 He took me by the hand and led me up to the second floor to a bedroom.  It was a no frills fuck, a blowjob to get him hard again and then another hard and fast fuck.  We returned to the party and he told one of his buddies what had happened and his buddy hit on me.  When I saw Bobby glancing our way I grabbed the guy by the hand and led him upstairs.  I put out for seven black guys that night and told two of them who were friends of Bobby’s that I’d like to see them again.

It had started out as a way to get even with Bobby and then it took on a life of it’s own.  I found that I was attracted to black men.  They seemed to have some sort of animal magnetism that drew me to them.  It wasn’t long before I was known around campus as that “nigger loving whore” and I have to admit it was true.  The night I’d let seven of them have me pretty much set the tone for my last six months at school.  I dated only blacks and at parties I usually ended up having sex with several.  One memorable night I was gangbanged by twenty-one of them.  I staggered out of that bedroom and got in the tub to soak and as I relaxed in that, hot soothing water I thought about what I was doing and how destructive it was.  I knew I needed to make some major changes in my life.  For the rest of the tern I avoided blacks and didn’t date anyone, white or black, until I graduated.  I found a job and an apartment and started out on my new career. 

Over the next year I stayed away from men and concentrated on my job.  One night while I was working late the janitor came into the room where I was working.  He was a middle aged man and not particularly good looking, but he was black and the animal magnetism that I’d always felt around blacks was there and he enjoyed me right on my desk.  I worked late almost every night after that and spent a lot of time on my desk on my back.  One night, about three weeks after the first time, he showed up with a couple of buddies, all black of course, and before long I was getting gangbanged almost every night.  Again I made an attempt to gain control of my life.  I quit my job and moved clear across the country to try and start over.  I met Barry, fell in love, and we got married.  Barry knew nothing of my past, but he did know about my racist parents.  He wanted to know why I never had any contact with them and I told him about the sexual abuse.  He just assumed from my nervousness whenever I was around blacks that I had my parent’s attitudes toward minorities.  He couldn’t have been more wrong.  I was nervous around blacks because I was scared to death of what could happen.

I looked over at Jason and he smiled at me and I felt a tingle in my crotch.  A glance up front at the chauffeur showed him looking back at us and smiling.  My panties got wet.  Two of them, “Sweet Jesus Janice” I thought, “Keep control, be strong.”

BARRY

I expected Janice to be late so I went to bed around ten-thirty.  I admit that I did it so I wouldn’t have to face her when she got home.  I figured that she would be in a pissy mood after being forced to spent four or five hours with Jason and I’d just as soon wait until the next day to get hollered at again for not rescuing her.  I woke up at seven and found that I was alone in bed.  Great, I thought, she’s so pissed that she’d rather sleep on the couch than sleep with me.  I got up, took my shower and headed for the kitchen to put the coffee on.  On the way I looked in the spare bedroom, but Janice wasn’t there.  She wasn’t on the couch either.  I put the coffee on and checked out the rest of the house - no Janice!  I poured myself a cup of coffee and got out the phone book and looked up the number of the limo company.  I called and found out that the limo had returned at twenty after midnight.  I was just picking up the phone to call the police when I heard a car door slam and I got up and headed for the front room and got there just as Janice came through the door.  She was a mess!  Her nylons had runs in them and her black cocktail dress had white stains on it.  I started to ask her where she’d been and she cut me off with a “Not now Barry, we’ll talk later” and she hurried past me to the bedroom.  I turned and started to follow her, but then stopped and went to the front window and looked out.  There was a Cadillac in the drive and I could see two men sitting on the front seat.  Because of the tinted windows I couldn’t make out who they were.  I was debating going outside when I heard Janice come out of the bedroom and I turned and saw that she had changed into jeans and a sweatshirt.  “Janice, what…”  “Later Barry, I don’t have time now” and she opened the front door.  I reached out to grab her arm, but she dodged it and went running down the steps and then down the drive to the Cadillac.  The passenger door opened and a black man got out and Janice slid into the car and was sitting between the two men when the car backed out of the drive, turned and headed down the street.  In the back of my mind I had the feeling that I had seen the black man before and suddenly it came to me - he was the chauffeur that had picked up Janice the night before.  I wondered what the hell that was all about.  In the bedroom I found that Janice had just taken off her clothes and dropped them on the floor.  I picked them up to toss them into the laundry hamper and I noticed that the crotch of her panties was soaking wet and then I noticed that the wet was slick and slimy.  I raised it to my nose and sniffed and I knew immediately what it was.  Janice and I were going to have a lot to talk about when she got home, an awful lot to talk about.