Chapter 18

Before she went off to Africa to save the world, Trudy hadn’t known any black people, or even paid much attention to that segment of American society. That’s not unusual. African Americans only comprise 13% of the population. It isn’t the best analogy, but it’s a little like seeing a limo. They’re fairly rare, if you’re not at the Oscars, or some such event. She made the same mistake many of us make, not only about black people, but about “yellow” and “red” and “whatever designation” people, too. Because they look vaguely the same, we assume they are all the same. This is what angry young (and maybe not-so-young) people mean when they say we’re closet racists. They’re doing exactly the same thing, by assuming all “whites” are racist. Life looks pretty simple when people are compartmentalized into a few groups.

Granted, Trudy had been disabused of that unconscious notion as soon as she got to Africa, and started meeting a plethora of very different black people. She soon learned there were all kinds, good, bad, kind, mean, happy, sad, you name it. That’s the way the whole world is. Nobody is the same as anybody else, and life is very complicated because of that. On top of that, she met many white people, too, from places like Holland, and the UK, and Germany, and even some of the Slavic countries. They were all different, too. She met a lot of Chinese people, who worked for companies involved with China’s attempt to develop resources on the dark continent. They were less different, individually, but she could still tell they had independent personalities.

And all of these different people were different, in part, because of cultural variances. That happened in America too, on a regional basis. One example is grits. Grits might play a large cultural role in one person’s life, while another might never have eaten them at all, and has no interest in trying them.

So the Trudy who came back from Africa was much wiser and more sophisticated than the Trudy who left America. She didn’t feel wiser and more sophisticated, but she was.

Now, after months of “normal” living, some of her wisdom and sophistication was paying benefits. She was good at handling high school and college kids who worked at Taco Bell, and for whom the job wasn’t the pinnacle of their existence. Those who didn’t really care about the company could be motivated by other means. She knew how good it felt to be appreciated, and appreciation for workers in fast food joints is rare. It wasn’t rare in her Taco Bell, though, and everybody who worked there was aware of it.

This isn’t a rah-rah situation for Trudy, though. It sets up the irony of the fact that, when it came to Chuck, Trudy fell right back into the trap of assuming that people who look alike are alike. Her unconscious racism caused her to believe some things about Chuck that just weren’t true.

Her “beliefs” were somewhat unformed and vague. She’d met lots of men who were better educated than Chuck. Engineers, CEOs, and other highly educated men weren’t rare in the NGOs who gathered money from either a generous public or the government teat, and then used it (ostensibly) to improve the lives of the downtrodden. She’d met cultured, powerful men before.

She didn’t see Chuck as one of those, though. He was a “kid” for one thing. He was older than the average college kid who worked for her, but he was still a kid. She had no idea his father was both rich and powerful. Chuck didn’t use that information as any kind of bargaining chip in his college life. If anything, he preferred that nobody knew about that. The few short, terse conversations she’d had with him hadn’t revealed much about his personality. Basically, as she got ready to go for coffee, she had no expectations at all. She had a few assumptions to work off of, but no expectations.

Her racism didn’t spring from bigotry. She simply believed Chuck would act like “a black man”.

He didn’t, of course, since there is no single person who can be a representative of that entire race. He simply acted like himself.

To be honest, Chuck didn’t have any real expectations, either. He just thought Trudy would be an interesting person, who might have compelling stories to tell. He liked Chastity, and a girl often absorbs things from her parents, so he thought he might like Trudy, too. The bias on his part was that he tended to seek out people his father would disregard as unimportant, beneath his attention. That created a few assumptions on Chuck’s part, too. Those assumptions had nothing to do with race, but they “categorized” Trudy in other ways. Again, these assumptions were both unintentional and unconscious, based more on ignorance than negative intent.

Anyone who has gone on a first date knows how strained and awkward the atmosphere can be. Both people are trying to be careful. If they think they like the other person, they try to get that person to like them, too. If they’re not sure things will go anywhere, they may be reluctant to try to be inviting. The two may have nothing in common to talk about. There may be no chemistry. One or the other might be fighting off a cold. There are dozens of reasons why a first date might not go splendidly.

In this case, a complicating factor was that, while neither even thought of this as a date, subconsciously both realized that it fit the parameters of one. Trudy was clearly reluctant to be there, even though she had arrived on time. Chuck realized he was going to have to practice his interview skills to get her to talk. The approach he took bore fruit. He simply asked her to talk about the things in Africa that had made her angry. Whether it was inefficiencies or graft or outright theft of resources, or peers and superiors who were difficult to work with, she was quite willing to talk about it. Trudy really had wanted to help people, and not being able to, or only being able to on a limited basis, made her want to howl.

One latte turned into two, and then Chuck said, “Are you hungry? I’m hungry. Let’s grab a bite.”

They left the coffee shop and walked three doors down to a place that made submarine sandwiches. He had listened to her, hearing exactly the kinds of things he had hoped to hear: stories of what it was like to work in a third world country. She had become more comfortable as he didn’t react like most men. Most men wanted to talk about themselves. Her assumptions softened, and the low grade hostility that had kept her face a tight mask since he’d known her, faded. He moved from asking what had made her unhappy, to the things she was proud of being part of. Talking about that relaxed her even more.

“You know, you have a really beautiful smile,” he said at one point. The comment was off the cuff, and completely because he’d never seen her smile before this.

It caught her off guard. Had she taken the time to think about it, she would have come to the conclusion he was simply being honest. It was merely a compliment. Her guard, going up, elbowed aside her wisdom and experience.

“I don’t usually have much to smile about,” she said.

“Stick with me, sister. I love to make women smile.”

There was no innuendo intended in his comment. It might have been poorly phrased, but it wasn’t a line. Her radar lit up, though, and suddenly he became “male” on a level that overshadowed “Chuck”.

Something in her eyes alerted Chuck, and he thought about what he’d said.

“Not that way,” he blurted. “I mean I’m not bragging. I just like to be with happy women.”

“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.

“Um ... no. Why?”

“I just wondered what kind of girl would find you attractive.” Her tone made it clear she didn’t expect any girl to find him attractive.

“Ouch,” he said, pulling back.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, her voice dry. It was obvious she was reciprocating for his verbal faux pas.

He tried to repair the damage.

“I simply meant that being around a woman who is happy is a lot more fun than being around one who is grumpy,” he said. “To that end, I try to do things that make people happy, instead of grumpy.”

“How kind of you,” she said, still unforgiving.

“Look,” he said, his voice deepening. “I know you had a rough time in Africa, and I know you probably have good reasons to be suspicious of men, but I’m not any of those guys. I don’t have any nefarious designs on you. I just like your daughter, and you seemed interesting.”

“Why do I seem interesting?” she demanded.

“You’ve been to interesting places and done interesting things!” he said, his voice rising.

“Is that all?”

“What else is there?” he asked, scooting is chair back. He stared at her.

It was at that point that Trudy Peters, in a flash of insight, realized she was a racist. She’d been sitting with this man for almost two hours. They had talked about lots of things, but at no point had he been anything other than a black man. She had arrived at the coffee shop with the intent to have coffee with Chuck, but as soon as she walked in, she was suddenly having coffee with a black man. She hadn’t realized that then, but she did, now. She had made several assumptions about him. One combined both racism and misandry. When her mind had centered on the ‘accidental innuendo’ he’d uttered, she had made assumptions about his intent, based on his gender. It had been clear that he hadn’t intended it to be innuendo, but she’d ignored that and assumed that, ‘like all black men’, he wanted to have sex with her.

She was horrified in an instant, and then devastated on two fronts. One was that all her therapy sessions which had seemed to rid her of negative thoughts had obviously been in vain. The second involved the lofty ideals that caused her to seek to help people in Africa and had always been her anchor to sanity. When things went horribly wrong in her life, she clung to the concept that she was honestly trying to help people. That inevitably led to sacrifice. She had always thought of herself as being noble.

Now, she realized, she was just as bad as all those people who had exploited Native Africans, using their plight to skim aid money, or get access to resources, or simply grab whatever power they could over oppressed people.

She burst into tears, sobbing. There were only six or seven other patrons in the shop, but all of them turned to stare at her.

Chuck stared, too. Her hostility had caused him to decide to walk away, but suddenly she wasn’t hostile anymore. His mind raced as he tried to remember everything that had been said; everything he’d said. He couldn’t think of any reason for her sudden hysterics. His “breeding” kicked in and he got up, to go stand beside her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Do you need help?”

“Yeeeees,” wailed Trudy, thinking she needed all manner of help, to expunge something inside her she loathed. A philosopher once said, “Self-loathing is the manifestation of Hell on Earth.” He had a point. There are few things as hellish as hating or despising the only person you can’t get away from.

“What can I do?” asked Chuck.

She blubbered, unable to frame a verbal response. Finally, he just pulled a chair to sit beside her. He reached for her hand and she slumped to fall against him. At that moment, human touch seemed like the only thing floating on the sea of misery she was drowning in. She grasped for it instinctively.

An employee approached and asked if he needed to call 911.

“I don’t think so,” said Chuck. “I think she’s unhappy, not injured.”

“She’s scaring the customers,” pointed out the sandwich-maker.

“Then the customers need to get a clue,” said Chuck. “All she’s doing is crying.”

“Still, you need to take her somewhere else.”

“You’re a dick,” said Chuck, calmly. “My father is a big shot attorney. He’d love to sue the shit out of you for corporate malfeasance.”

“What’s that?” asked the employee, backing away.

“The fact that you have to ask means you’d lose in court,” said Chuck. That wasn’t true. The actions of the store employee didn’t match any accepted definition of corporate malfeasance, even if that definition was stretched to the breaking point.

“All I said was that she’s scaring the customers,” groaned the minimum wage worker.

“Never mind,” said Chuck, who realized that taking it out on an innocent bystander wouldn’t solve anything. “Give me a minute to calm her down and we’ll leave.”

“Yeah, do that,” said the man, who turned and left.

Chuck put his mouth close to Trudy’s ear. Her sobbing had abated a little, but she was still inconsolable.

“Hey,” he said, softly. “Whatever I said, I’m sorry. Come on. We need to get you to your car.”

He gripped her elbow and stood up, pulling. Her arm went limply up in the air, but her body stayed firmly anchored to the chair.

“Trudy!” he said, sternly. “We need to go, Trudy.”

Perhaps it was the stern quality of his voice, or perhaps the learned instinct to do what a male was ordering her to do, that caused her legs to work. She stood, shakily, and he put his arm around her. She shuffled, still crying, beside him, and he led her to the door. Everyone was still looking at them, but then they were outside. The fresh air seemed to have an effect on her and her crying subsided to a series of gasps and hiccups. Chuck just kept her moving.

“Where’s your car?” he asked.

“I’m s-s-sorry,” she whined.

“You can be sorry later,” he said, not wanting to stop or draw any more attention to them. Growing up as the son of a rich and powerful lawyer hadn’t insulated him from bigotry. When cops saw trouble, and a black man was present, it wasn’t unusual for them to assume it was the black man causing the trouble. He didn’t want anyone being curious about why a white woman was crying while she was with a black man. “Where is your car?” he asked again.

She pointed, vaguely. He hadn’t paid any attention to the cars parked at Chastity’s house, and had no idea which one Trudy might be driving.

“Which one?” he asked.

“Th-th-the blue one,” she managed.

He decided to put her in the passenger seat. She had no business driving until she calmed down. He got in the driver’s seat and just sat there.

It only took her five minutes to regain some semblance of control, but it seemed like twenty to Chuck. During it all, he decided not to speak. He watched traffic, particularly pedestrians, to see if anybody was too interested in them.

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