Baltimore and the Big O

I never found Conspiracy Theory all that attractive. We were roughly the same height, and when I wore heels, I was taller. He was so slim I could never squeeze my big-boned self into his jackets or sweaters, let alone his pants. And then there was the 32-year age difference. Oh yeah, that.

But despite the fact that Conspiracy never made me swoon over how fine he was, he did hold the distinction of being the first man to make me come.

It happened en route to South Carolina, where my mom and stepfather lived. I was going to visit them for the holidays, and Conspiracy offered to help me drive.

It was an interesting trip.

For one thing, I got to meet Conspiracy's elderly aunt, who lived in Baltimore. Talk about bleak. Baltimore looked even worse than New Haven and Detroit. Chinese takeouts with four-inch-thick bulletproof glass and crumbling neighborhoods filled with ladies like his aunt who were too old to leave.

If Aunt Conspiracy was shocked to see her nephew with a girl young enough to be his daughter, she didn't let on. What she couldn't hide was her sorrow at how he had turned out. She revealed it in the way she caressed an old picture of a young Conspiracy wearing an Air Force uniform. As if that picture were her real nephew, and she was still mourning his long-ago death at the hand of the middle-aged revolutionary he'd become instead.

Further south on our trip, Conspiracy and I stopped at a Waffle House in North Carolina, near where he grew up. We walked past a table of white men, and the racial hatred was so thick, it hung in the air.

I'd only experienced this kind of racism once before, when I was in high school. My dad was driving me to a gifted and talented summer camp in western Michigan, and he decided – of all places in the universe to stop – at a McDonald's in Jackson, Michigan. Home of the Jackson state prison, primarily populated with black men from Detroit. As we got our burgers and fries, the white townspeople grew dead silent and glared at us with out-and-out hatred.

And now racial hatred was back in the air, in a different small town, in a different state, with a different group of white people. Conspiracy noticed me noticing the tension and acknowledged that yes, he'd grown up here in Klan country. And he wasn't about to take any sh*t. The angry white men could see it in the way he walked with his head held high, his back straight and his stony face daring them to f*ck with him.

But the most memorable moment of the trip took place in a high-rise hotel room in some anonymous city along the I-95 freeway. It was daytime. The long, striped curtains were drawn, and we were on the bed making love. Suddenly, the room started spinning and I felt like I was floating on air, high above the bed and the baby-blue hotel-room carpet. It was my first orgasm, and it was magical.

Conspiracy Diaries Part 5 of 25 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25)
Conspiracy Lessons Learned 1-4 (1 2 3 4)

---

Please "Like" Don't Be a Slut on Facebook or follow on Twitter.