I have found this website, to which to post my 'confessions'. Why do I bother? Perhaps as a catharsis, an emotional cleansing. I have sinned, grievously. Might I yet find redemption? – Erica H.
Journal Entry 07/17/02
Mine is a story told a thousand times before. Why, then, do I bother even writing? Perhaps because it happened to me, something I would not have imagined possible until this moment. If the voyeur within takes you, if your prurient interest is aroused, then read on. If not, file this away as just another tale of forbidden lust and seek elsewhere.
For many it is hard to accept that forty years after the civil rights movement there are still pockets within this country that segregation holds sway. The small Mississippi town in which I reside is one such place. Blacks and whites keep to themselves, no longer by law, but by choice. Thus, I never really had the opportunity to know someone of color. While I fantasized along with my girlfriends as to what it would be like to be with a black man, this was simply teenage girl talk. None of us would have dared cross that forbidden line. As the years passed, such fantasies grew dim for me. Marriage, children, maintaining a home, all the usual trappings of middle class white southern life, dominated my thoughts and actions. Sexually, I knew that I was a bit different from my friends. Most of them enjoyed the waning attention of their husbands. Even those who knew their spouses sought comfort elsewhere were not upset. To them, sex had been a burden, a duty, payment for the lifestyle they sought. With me, though, sex was a very prominent part of my life. Even after twenty years of marriage, my husband and I made love on a regular and thoroughly enjoyable basis. Yet, as I entered my fifth decade of life, my mind again began to wonder, to ask what I might be missing. It was such thoughts, I am sure, that led to the events I am about to reveal.
While our home is not the most ostentatious in the neighborhood, we do take pride in keeping it up, both inside and out. The latter is accomplished in large part because of the excellent lawn care and landscaping service we employ. An elderly black man, Richard Deeds, who personally attends to the care and upkeep of our yard, runs it. This is typical of our town that blacks do such labor. And Richard had been with our family for such a length of time that I rarely even took notice of his presence in the yard. Frequently I would sunbathe in the shelter of our backyard while he worked, oblivious to what he might be thinking. He was, after all, in his seventies, and such thoughts as my bathing suit clad body might have aroused should have long since left him.
Thus, it so happened one day last month, I took no particular notice of the lawnmower noise as I went out back to sunbathe. Wrapped up, as I was, in a particularly engrossing book, I paid no attention to who was operating the machine. It was not until I looked up to apply more lotion to my legs that I saw it was not Richard mowing the lawn but rather a young black man I had never seen before. I suddenly became aware of how exposed I was to his gaze. The bikini I wore was too revealing for public swimming, but had always served me well for private sun bathing. My husband was fond of my tanned look, and for him I would sometimes even remove my top while tanning. Of course I would never do such a thing when Richard was about, but the thin piece of fabric covering my breasts seemed inadequate to cover me properly from the eyes of this new man. Still, I felt the best action to take was one of nonchalance.
"Hello," I spoke to him over the noise of the mower, "Who are you and where is Richard?"
The man explained to me that he was Jonathon, Richard's nephew. It seems Richard had suffered an accident, and that he, Jonathon, had come down from Jackson to run the business while his uncle recovered. Jonathon was a student at Jackson State University, but was free for the summer, and thus able to help out his uncle.
