As I crack the lid on the crate of yellowed documents, I have no idea my dull academic career is about to get upended or that my quiet, perverted little prayers are about to be answered.
Three months ago, I landed in Chocolate City.
A demotion dressed as an opportunity. Semi-stellar record (Master’s in History at twenty-one, PhD at twenty-three), a couple years of research ass-kissing, and I was well on my way to a lifetime of other people’s projects.
Then the American Academic Institute recruited me to run my own.
The AA Institute isn’t as slick as it sounds—a private circle-jerk bankrolled by rich people who want to play historian without funding it—but I took the post.
Especially after learning the program they wanted me to lead was The History of American Slavery.
It’s not my official scholarly party line, but I have a sick fixation on the slave era beyond its academic weight.
My obsession with Black women means I can’t think about the slave master/black harem setup without the itch in my pants overriding my professional objectivity.
As a scholar, I know the fantasy is a lie.
Slave women’s journals document the horrors in plain language, and slaveholder writings make clear that Black women lived on the level of livestock.
I’ve also carried the guilty assumption that, through the generational transmission of that history, Black women today want nothing to do with white men like me.
I’ve never let myself imagine otherwise. Result: chronic blue balls.
D.C. doesn’t improve things.
My partner, Dr. Tamara Addison, is twenty-eight, another prodigious researcher whose articles I’ve read in peer-reviewed journals.
The publications leave out her flawless cinnamon skin, the china-doll ness of her face, and the brown eyes that hold steady when she disagrees with you.
Five-three, with legs that make me forget my sentence halfway through it.
Her warmth might’ve undone me entirely if not for the grad assistant, Patrice Monet—twenty-three, skin the color of dark chocolate, full lips, high cheekbones, almond eyes, and a wild waterfall of black hair above a six-foot body that belongs on a runway and keeps straying into my thoughts at inconvenient hours.
Home isn’t easier.
The AA Institute set me up on the second floor of a three-story walk-up in Adams Morgan.
The landlady, Veronica Blaine, is late thirties—classic ebony beauty, great bones, full lips, and a lethally assembled figure.
Her daughter Kendra, twenty-one, runs a couple shades lighter: green eyes, an angelic oval face, and a dancer’s frame except for the D-cups that contradict it.
The most disruptive neighbor is Veronica’s thirty-year-old sister Julia on the third floor—big smile, big eyes, and a 38D-24-37 body she displays in skin-tight jeans and barely-there tops like it’s her full-time occupation. The effect on my Johnson is consistent.
That’s me on the day Jebediah Harrington’s effects arrive.
Harrington was a slave master, born in 1770, died 1853, whose belongings turned up with a Tennessee historical society—including primary documents: a ledger book and three journals written by slave women.
The AA Institute bought them for me to study.
The society also sent a dossier full of oddities. Harrington’s land holdings were minor, but he amassed fortunes.
He kept a surplus of slaves he treated well: no whips, no chains, no overseer—none attempted escape, many freed during his lifetime, the rest at his death.
I cracked the first journal, wondering what kind of man he was.
Slave journals, while not uniformly grim, are usually distressing—the humiliating texture of day-to-day bondage rendered in plain hand. The first book, dated 1804, hit differently:
”Such happiness with Master Jeb. I know I shall never get enough of his lovemaking. Last night his caresses drove me to spend, I know not how many times, and this morning was bliss as well. If only I could be in his arms every hour of the day, I would be the happiest woman on Earth.”
I blinked. Read on. The whole book was a testimony of her sexual adventures with the man. She was in love and apparently glad to be there.
I set it down and picked up journal two, dated 1822. Different hand, same fever:
”I so love to fuck Master Jeb. Even now, just the thought of him inside me makes my woman’s parts wet. No woman has ever been so happy as I am when I am fucking Master.”
That was just the opener. I turned to the third, dated 1832:
”Though he is past 60 and I am but 20, I fear Master Jeb has worn me out. His lovemaking of last night has left me so sore I could not rejoin him in his bed this morning. I only hope that I am healed by tonight. To go for more than a day without his touch seems a torment.”
Who was this man? I went to the ledger—all business—until I found folded letter paper tucked inside:
The Secret of My Life
June 1853
I, Jebediah Harrington, feel the end of my life approaching. I have lived these many years in the glow of great happiness and feel the need to set down the secret of it. If it was undeserved, I leave it to posterity to judge.
Fifty-eight years ago, I engaged myself in the scientific study of how various substances occurring in nature affected the body.
In the course of experimenting, I concocted a mixture which I believed would, consumed only once, fight disease and increase bodily strength and stamina.
Not wanting to risk danger to anyone but myself, I swallowed it.
The effect was immediate—strength and endurance rose to many times the human norm. But that was not all. The mixture also increased the capacity of my mind.
With little effort, I found I could see into anyone I wished: their thoughts, memories, and passions as clearly as words on a page.
Soon I discovered I could rearrange those thoughts as easily as chess pieces—release hidden passions, make foes into friends, and create desires where there had been few.
After making my discovery, I selfishly kept it for my own amusement. Over the years, I used it to gain influence and luxuriate in the flesh of my beautiful African women.
Now, as I near the end, I wonder if I could have used it for the benefit of humanity instead. Thus here I record the combination of simple plants and herbs and directions for creating my original serum.
All can be purchased by the common man.
I read it a hundred times.
The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were the age of the talented amateur—men of means who tried their hands at science and sometimes did real work. Had he stumbled onto something? Or was it deathbed delusion?
I made a note of the natural food store down the block. One sentence made up my mind: Luxuriating in the flesh of my beautiful African women.
It’s later that same afternoon. I’m alone in my office, waiting.
Five minutes since I swallowed the concoction—no Jekyll-and-Hyde convulsion, no other sign. I’m about to leave, feeling like a horse’s ass but not poisoned, when I hear the front door.
Geoffrey Lanning. AA Institute trustee, endower, filthy rich, pretentious, tight-fisted. The last person we want to drop by.
“Dr. Parsons,” he says, with his well-practiced disguised dislike. “Do you have time to talk budgets?”
“I suppose.”
I already know what’s coming—his usual conservation lecture. Then I realize I know it because I’m hearing it. I’m inside his head. His meanness, his penny-pinching, and his self-satisfaction lay out as clearly as the recipe said they would.
“You know, Mr. Lanning, I think our budget is way too small. We need to boost it by at least fifty percent.”
He doesn’t blink. “You’re right. Strange, I’ve never realized it, but you need more money. I’ll bring it up at the next board meeting.”
Easy. I simply make the suggestion and walk out into the afternoon on a full charge. What can’t I do?
I cab home.
As I’m about to enter Lanning’s head and tell the driver to forget the fare, I stop myself. Getting a windfall from a miser is one thing—this man works for his living. I pay the fare.
Coming down the stairs, I see Veronica’s door standing open as usual. I’ve made a habit of stopping to say good morning. On impulse, I tap in.
Her mind is running hot with fantasies about me.
Months of them, building since I moved in. The only things stopping her are the racial hang-up and her own shyness.
She’s heard my door, knows I’m heading down, and is cursing herself for not calling out sooner.
I nudge the mental door. Not a suggestion—just removing the bolt on what’s already there. She won’t do anything she doesn’t want to do.
I whistle and push her actual door open.
“Mark!” She’s standing by the breakfast table, robe loose, blue silk nightgown doing real work on her figure, the best cleavage I’ve ever seen on open display. “Take some coffee?”
“Maybe just a cup.”
We talk.
She doesn’t need to say anything—the dreamy attention and slow smile make it plain. I don’t push further yet. For one thing, Kendra’s still in the apartment. A quick check gives me—
Same situation.
The daughter’s fixation on me runs no less intense than the mother’s, if somewhat less detailed. She’s still a virgin. The racial hang-up and inexperience are the whole obstacle. I remove both.
“I don’t have a ton of work today,” I tell Veronica. “Home by noon.”
“Come by and I’ll make lunch.” Kendra appears in the living room—painted-on jeans and a pink halter that shows off what her m