This is an alternate version of a previous story, POOL PARTY. The first story, and this one too, are based on actual events, at least the details about where my wife worked, the party, and the conversation with Lisa the next Monday. The first paragraph and the first three lines of dialog are 100% true; the rest of the story is more along the lines of what might have happened had things gone a bit differently.
This story took place back in 1982, when my wife was working at an inner-city hospital. We had been invited to a holiday party at the home of the Head Nurse the previous Saturday. It had been four hours of me mostly sitting around listening to the six or seven attendees talking about work, and wandering around the basement waiting until we could go home. There had been the nurse, Lisa, her husband Jim, a male nurse on their unit named Tyrone, and four other women who worked on the same unit as my wife. As you might expect, the talk had been all about work and I was more than ready to leave when I could finally pry my wife away a little after midnight. I had been to two other holiday parties involving hospital staff, and they were all the same. I promised myself this would be the last one I attended. Not only was I the odd man out as far as the conversation went, but my wife and I were the only white people there and I mostly sat my myself, ignored by the others and counting the minutes until we could leave.
The following Monday, Jane and I were getting ready for bed. I crawled under the covers while she was closing the drapes. She turned to me as she got into bed and said, "Lisa told me today that after we left Saturday night, they had an orgy."
It was weird that she just delivered the news with a calm tone of voice, and just did it out of the blue.
"What?" I was caught off guard and was trying to get my brain working again.
"She told me they had an orgy after we left."
I didn't say anything for a few seconds, then asked, "How did something like that ever come up in normal conversation?" On the one hand, this seemed like something out of a
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letter. On the other hand, I remembered working with a guy back when I was in high school who told me his black secretary went to an orgy every Friday after work. She used to actually brag about it. I always assumed it was commonplace in certain areas.
"I thanked her for having us over, and that's when she told me," Jane answered.
I thought about it for a second, and said, "She is recruiting you; you know."
Jane looked confused. "Recruiting me? What are you talking about?"
"She wants to get you to one of her orgies," I answered, watching her face to see how she would react. She still just looked puzzled. "Did you say anything negative when she told you, or make any kind of facial expression?"
"I don't think so," Jane said. "I was so surprised I think I just said something like, Oh, wow!"
"If you knew ahead of time that was going to happen, would you have still wanted to go?" I asked.
"Would you?" she asked.
I shook my head. "I asked first. Be honest."
Jane was sitting against the headboard and she nervously licked her lips and swallowed. She looked down at her hands and said so softly I could barely hear her, "I don't know. I couldn't stop thinking about it all day. I kept looking at the people on my unit and couldn't stop picturing them being naked with each other."
"How did that make you feel?"
She was still looking down at her hands, not meeting my eyes. "It kind of turned me on a little bit," she admitted. "I got kind of horny."
"So, if Lisa came out and asked you to another party, what would you tell her?"
"I don't think she'd do that."
I laughed at that. "If she wasn't thinking about it, she wouldn't have told you anything today. Why else bring it up? And you didn't answer my question. Would you want to go?"
"Would you? Do you want to go to one of those?"
"This isn't about me, this is about you," I told her.
Jane looked confused. "What do you mean?"
"I bet Lisa is trying to get you to one of her parties, not both of us. I think if you had showed up by yourself last Saturday, she would have put the question to you right then and there. Don't you find it a little strange that she said something to you about it out of nowhere, and when it was just the two of you."
"Do you really think so?" Jane asked, raising her eyes for the first time to meet mine.
"Well, you've worked on that unit for three years and you've told me a dozen times that the women have tried to get you to go out clubbing with them after work. Maybe Lisa figures it will be easier if she just comes right out and tells you what is going on."
"I don't follow, what do you think is going on?"
I propped myself up beside her. "If you go out with your work friends, what kind of places do you think they'll take you to? Some inner-city club, right? You'd be the only white women in the place and you would draw black men like a light draws moths. They want to see you get together with a black guy, that's clear enough."
"You think so? Why?"
"It's a game," I told her. "When I played ball in college I was around a lot of black guys and they loved fucking white girls. I doubt that's changed much."
"I don't know...you think my friends would want to do that?"