Chapter 4
WINNIE
The subject is a registered nurse who is working in a large hospital in Los Angeles. She is twenty-eight years old and lives alone in an apartment close to her job which was where this interview took place.
"I was born and brought up in the Watts district not too far from here. When riots broke out there not too long ago, the casualties were brought to the hospital I worked in. I felt that I was a nurse on a battlefield rather than in a large city in America.
"Each time a new victim was brought into the emergency room I realized that I could be the one lying on that operating table if I hadn't made myself go through nursing school for three years.
"By the way, I'm a registered nurse and not a practical one. There is a world of difference. A practical does menial jobs and is given just enough training to clean out bed pans while a registered nurse goes through years of college level study. "I'm one of the few black registered nurses in the hospital and L'm often mistaken for a practical. This can be understood because all of them are black. When a white girl goes into nursing it is always at the better paying, more prestigious registered level.
"In my ten years of schooling and nursing I haven't seen one white practical. Practical nursing is considered nigger work.
"I suppose I sound like one of those militants that always make the news. I'm not. I'm just a tired black woman sick of color.
"When I first started in nursing school the teachers always made an issue of pointing me out as a 'credit to my race' because I was trying to 'better' myself. The teachers meant well but they never knew just how condescending they sounded.
"How is it that you never hear of a white being a credit to his race? And, weren't all those white girls who were training with me trying to
'better' themselves, too?
"At least half the girls I went through nursing school with have either married or taken up other occupations. Still, nursing is considered an old maid's job because there are so many unmarried females in it.
"I'm twenty-eight which isn't exactly old, but my chances of finding the right man get slimmer every year. Of course, I can always get a lover. There are certain types of men who are drawn to nurses. These are the leaners, the ones who are always looking for someone to take care of them.
"Hell, I'd like to be taken care of for a change. After nursing all day or night I'm ready to have someone hold my hand and ask how I feel.
"In nursing school I created an awkward social problem because, when my white friends threw parties, they didn't know if they should invite a black male or not, to keep me company. Besides, the only black men they knew were middle-aged porters and almost all of them were married.
"Usually my white girl friends simply invited me without trying to balance out the black male-female ratio. The white fellows I met at the parties were friendly enough, but few wanted my telephone number. When I did give it out I was rarely called.
"One of the few rare calls came from a boy I fell in love with. His name was George and he was an intern. He came from a hard-working family that made all the sacrifices to put him through med school and he felt he owed them something.
"One of the things he felt he owed them was a good marriage, which quickly left me out. His family didn't spend years of savings just so that their boy would marry a nigger. George never put this in so many words, but I knew what the score was.
"George eventually married well and he is now in practice in Beverly Hills. If he had married me he would be doing charity work in Watts. In a way I'm glad he never proposed, because I would always feel guilty about ruining his career in medicine.
"A doctor with a nigger wife will have trouble making the important social scene that is required to build up a practice in a place like Beverly Hills.
"Still, my lack of romance didn't bother me so much in nursing school because I was always kept so busy learning. When I graduated I, as a freshly-minted nurse, was put on night duty, which, in itself, narrow a girl's love life down.
"Double shifts also left little or no time for romantic encounters on the outside ... but there was still the inside of the hospital.
"When I was placed on a ward with adult male patients, all of whom were white, I enjoyed the banter between them and the medical staff at first. Then some of them treated me as if I were some kind of part-time prostitute and would think nothing of exposing their genitals when they didn't have to.
"Men who were well able to wash themselves would throw back the covers and reveal their naked bodies with the demand that I clean them. I would have accepted this as something every pretty young nurse had to bear up with, except that these men only picked on me and the other black nurses.
"They treated the practicals with equal disrespect, and I suppose, they couldn't tell the difference between a registered and a practical. To them a nigger was a nigger.
"The white doctors weren't much better and they couldn't seem to get the idea that a black nurse was as good as one of their own kind. They were so used to looking down at the poor, black practicals that they treated me in the same fashion.
"In the operating room, where the only color I showed was the part of my face which was not covered by a surgical mask, I discovered that, even in a life-death emergency, doctors preferred white nurses. As soon as a doctor saw that small band of dark color above the surgical mask he either took over my duties or explained them to me in such a slow, careful way that indicated he had little trust in my abilities.
"I had to be the very best nurse in this hospital before I was accepted for myself.
It was hard enough for me to bear the slings and arrows of racial misfortune from staff and patients alike, but I also had to bear the burden of unwanted sexual overtures.
"A doctor who considered himself quite a catch because he was handsome and still single, enjoyed making advances to me when we were alone. He thought it a sport to chase a black girl after all the white ones he not only chased but caught.
"The fact that he had the same cavalier attitude to women of his own race as he had toward me made him easier to take, but I still couldn't stand him.
"One night, after I had assisted him on the ward, John invited me out for coffee. This was not unusual, so I accepted. But, instead of leading me into the coffee shop, John led me over to his car, an expensive sports model. 'That coffee they serve in the shop is piss,' he said with his typical sense of delicacy. 'I know a better place.'
"Since my shift was over, I sat next to him in the car fully expecting that he had more on his mind than a good cup of coffee. But, at that moment, I was in such a blue state that I needed something to excite me and a wrestling match with the biggest wolf in the hospital might be just it.
"John drove to his apartment house and parked in the garage under the building. 'I thought we were going for coffee?' I said when he stepped out of the car.
'"We are, in my place,' he explained. 'I make the best coffee in town.'
"I had expected him to drive out to some lover's lane where he would try to screw me and I would fend him off, but this was a bit more serious. In the wolf's lair I was one black lamb who had lost her way.
"Yet, I still went along with him. I knew that I was nothing but a piece of ass to him but it was something to be something to someone. That's the low state I was in that night. I was so desperate for attention that I was even willing to accept it from John, a man who considered anyone with a slit between her legs as fair game.
"I went up in the elevator with him and I could see how easy it was for him to get girls in and out of his apartment. No one else stepped into the elevator on its ride to his floor.
"John led me over to his apartment and unlocked the door. My heart began to pound faster. Sex hung heavily in the air like a living, hot and humid thing.
"As soon as the doctor closed the door behind us he switched on the lights. He was showing off his elegant lay-out, of course, but he had it to brag about. With soft music, the right amount of liquor, and the slightest erotic overture, any girl would wind up on her back in the apartment within minutes.
"When John actually did turn on a record player and offer me wine instead of coffee, I felt a damp pressure between my legs. I had been denying myself for so long I figured that I was due for a little screwing. Hell, I was a woman, after all.
"When I took the wine out of John's hand I knew I was as good as laid. I thought of all the other nurses, models, airline stewardesses and what-not he had had in the apartment and I was sure that, with his wide range of experience, black girls were not unknown to him.
"John sat down next to me on the sofa and patted my hand. 'You're a handsome woman, Winnie," he said. 'I'm sure you've got a whole line of studs over in Watts.'
'"Why Watts?' I complained. 'Don't you think that I can have male friends in other parts of L.A.? '
"He smiled in his smooth way. 'Well, honey, I didn't know that you dug Whitey,' he said.
"The bastard had only said that to get exactly that reaction. I was too tired to fight off another racial slur so I let it pass. After we finished a couple of glasses of wine John turned off all the lights which, in a way, made us the same color.
"He was becoming easier to take. All he had to do was reach out and grab me.
"The young doctor said he wanted to rub my feet and he took off my shoes. He told me to stretch out on the sofa and I did, with my feet in his lap. His hands felt wonderful as he massaged. I had to be exciting him in the same manner, because his penis began to erect under the heels of my bare feet.
"Well, I thought, what was a little sex between co-workers even if they were of different races?
"The doctor opened his pants and he placed his stiff dick between my bare feet. I didn't pull my feet away, but allowed him to roll his erect penis back and forth with my soles and heels. He paused briefly to take off his clothes, all the time leaving my feet in his lap.
"When he was completely naked he slipped alongside me. The sofa was narrow and he held me fast so that I wouldn't fall off onto the floor. 'Winnie, let's see what you black broads are made of,' he breathed.
'"We're made like white broads,' I told him. 'As a doctor and lover you should know that.'
"'But I don't,' he confessed. 'You're the first colored girl I've ever had up here.'
"So, I had been right all along. Curiosity rather than passion had lit his fires. He wanted to see what it was like to screw a nigger. In the midst of intimacy I couldn't escape racialism.
"I felt insulted but I was not inclined to move. The music was soft and low, the wine was warm and mellow, and I was primed for anything.
"When the doctor started to undo my white nurse's uniform, I helped him. Soon we were both naked and lying side-by-side on the narrow sofa. John created more room by getting on top of me. He rubbed the smooth head of his thick sex organ over my slit and thrilled me with this first really sexual touch.
'"Winnie, your pussy feels like any white girl's,' he said with almost detached interest as if viewing a bug on a slide.
"Was he kidding me or was he so stupid as to believe that Negro females were sexually different? Perhaps he was only attempting to get another rise out of me as he had done before. If that were the case I refused to play his game and remained silent.
"The doctor waited for a moment as if for some kind of reply. When it didn't come, he edged his tube of sex deeper into my hairy cleft. He was well endowed, I had to say that much for him. A man with his lack of personal charm needed all the help he could get and a large pecker was an important plus for him.
"Not only did John have a good-sized dick, he knew how to use it. He pushed the long, hard bulk of his meat inside my body to its full length. Instead of pulling up again, he lay on top of me and kissed me with his open mouth. We French-kissed with our tongue going wild.
"John moved up again slowly and then rammed down into me hard. 'Oh, you feel so warm and juicy!' he gasped as he broke our open-mouthed kiss.
"He rose and fell into me again and again. I slipped my hands over his back and buttocks as he screwed with virile heat. John continued screwing rapidly until he lay on top of me still once more. This time he shot his load. His male fluid squirted into my flesh and I moaned.
"The young doctor lay on top of me until he emptied out his juice. As soon as the last drop drained away, he got off my body and switched on the lights. This sudden change from darkness made me close my eyes abruptly. I couldn't understand why he wanted to ruin such a romantic mood ... if he had been in a romantic mood.
"Oddly enough, with all his show of virile force, the doctor was still regarding me as an interesting erotic specimen and no more. He looked down at my naked body with a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth and a leer burning in his eyes.
'"Your skin is like black velvet,' he said using a rare compliment.
"I looked at his pale nakedness. 'Your skin is like a bedsheet,' I told him.
"He laughed dryly. 'Can't get away from the hospital entirely, huh? I guess you could've said my skin was like a bedpan.'
"The doctor poured a couple of glasses of wine and sat on the sofa with my legs across his lap. His penis was now limp and resting. As I sipped the wine he rubbed one of his hands up between my legs until he reached my vagina. Then, without further ado, he spread the lips of my sexual opening wide and poured his glass of wine inside.
"The liquid burned my recently used erotic passage but John placed his mouth against my opening and started to lap the wine out of my body. I spread my legs so he could have more room in which to work out his oral advance.
"John sucked my cleft hard and lapped his tongue over my pubic hair. Then he slipped two of his fingers inside my opening and teased me into further excitement. Although his actions did arouse me sexually, he still went about it like a man giving a vaginal examination rather than performing an act of lust.
"I could not get over the idea that he would've been warmer if I had been white. As a black girl, though, I was a unique bug under glass to play with.
"No matter what my impression of John's love-making was I still didn't try to stop him. There had never been much love in my life and I was willing to take it where I could find it. I fell pleasantly wicked stretched out on the sofa with my legs spread and a naked white man paying attention to my cleft with his penis, mouth and fingers. I was only a nurse, not a saint in a starched uniform.
"I drank more wine and so did John, in his special way. He poured another glass over my breasts this time and the liquor burned my tender nipples. As before, the good doctor come to my aid by sucking them and lapping my breasts with his ever-busy tongue.
"John put me in such a mellow mood that I wanted to spend the entire night with him, but he told me he had an appointment later on. We dressed and went down in the elevator. The doctor drove me to my apartment, and just before he let me out of the car, he said, 'That was interesting. We should do it again some time.'
"Interesting. That was the word he chose. He didn't say that our affair had been wonderful or exciting or passionate, but, rather, interesting.
"Again I felt like one of his experiments back at the lab. I wasn't a woman who loved a man but a black thing from outer space who had fallen to earth and was examined rather thoroughly.
"I would have still returned to John's apartment for another session of screwing and sucking but he had the nastiest habit of bragging about his sexual conquests. It wasn't long before the entire hospital knew, both medical staff and patients, that I enjoyed making it with white men.
"While I hated having the affair talked about, John enjoyed it thoroughly. Almost out of desperation to stop the idea that I had some great need for white flesh, I started dating Amos, a black attendant. He was about fifteen years older than I was, but at least he was single.
"It wasn't long before I found out why Amos was single. He was a leaner, a man who depended on others for everything. At first I started picking up dinner checks and paying for movie tickets when he claimed he was 'short' that week. Then he claimed he needed a place to stay the night because he was being kicked out of his own room for non-payment.
"Like a fool, I let him stay with me. I made a place for him on the couch, but during the night he slipped in beside me. He woke me up with his roaming hands. I wanted to tell him to leave my bed, but lonely as always, I let him have his way with my body.
"Amos mounted me and rammed in his large sex organ. As he pumped, I spread my legs wide and dug my fingers into his back. He was strangely soft and flabby and his flesh left me cold. I wondered how I had ever gotten so intimate with a man I didn't like. But then, I hadn't liked John either.
"The black man shot his juice and groaned with self satisfaction. Men always were so pleased with themselves once they achieved an orgasm. 'I did it good, baby,' he told me as a statement of fact. 'Why do you want to mess with Whitey?'
"I tensed suddenly. All the desire I had in my body swiftly vanished. This was the first time he had ever mentioned that now well-publicized affair with John. 'Don't talk about it,' I told him coldly.
"Amos ignored my request even though he was using my money, my apartment, my bed and my body. He felt he had paid for all this with a few drops of warm sperm. 'Black women belong with black men,' he said. 'You don't want to be a white man's whore.'
"I pushed him off my body. 'I don't want to be anyone's whore,' I told him and left the bed.
"Amos lay back playing with his limp tube of meat that lay against his body like a dark snake on a dark beach. 'Baby, them whites don't know how to screw,' he said. 'You saw how good I was.'
"The man's ego stunned me. Actually John had been much more sexual than he had. I know that there is a myth that black men have superior sexual powers but that just isn't so. Take it from a girl who has had both races.
"Yet Amos seemed to believe the myth even though his erotic abilities were limited. On top of everything else, he took it for granted that I would be willing to pay him for his sexual favors. While he claimed I had been a whore to a white man, he was being a whore to me.
"Once Amos got into my apartment I couldn't get rid of him. He stopped going to work and claimed he was going to look for something 'better'. He already found something better ... me. He was the typical leaner who knew where a soft spot was and he lay down on it with his full weight.
"Still, Amos served a purpose. The hospital now talked about the fact that I was shacking-up with a black man. This took people's attention away from my one-night stand with John.
"The doctor seemed pleased that I had taken on a 'lover' and patted my fanny when we were alone one day. 'I'm glad you got a guy, Winnie,' he told me. 'I was worried about you. A girl with your body needs servicing all times.'
"Servicing. The doctor certainly had a way with words. He made me feel like a car going in for a lube job.
"Like all leaners, Amos became increasingly demanding. He kept asking me for more and more money, and when I stopped giving him all the cash he wanted, he took to beating me. You'd be surprised how many black men need to show their manhood by beating up their women.
"The practical nurses were always coming in with swollen eyes and bruises. And now I was showing up to work the same way.
"When Amos beat me up one day and took my entire paycheck, I decided to draw the line on the bastard once and for all. I called the police and had him arrested for assault and robbery. The police took it as just another nigger complaint, but Amos still went to jail for a few months.
"He promised to beat me up again once he got out, but if he does, I'll have him arrested again.
Too many black women forgive their men and go on being punching bags. I'm not that hard-up for male companionship.
"Right now I have no one in my life and feel happier that way. I suppose, after awhile, I'll take on another man. I might even go back to John because he keeps trying to invite me out for 'coffee'.
"Other doctors and patients also try to date me because I have the reputation as a swinger who doesn't care about the color of the men she screws. A swinger? I had one night with a white man who treated me like a bug and two months with a black man who treated me like a punching bag.
"The truth is that few nurses in the hospital live lonelier lives than mine. But they'll never believe it. As a young, attractive black woman they are sure I have men of all ages and colors trooping through my bedroom at all hours of the day or night.
"Some times I feel I should have stayed in Watts."
Diagnostic reaction:
The nurse wants to go back to Watts, the black ghetto of Los Angeles, because she finds her present life too confusing. Troubled people often look back towards the past from the torments of the present and the problems of the future.
Although her life had been difficult in Watts and she knew, via the riots that had taken place there that it hadn't changed, Winnie considers it better than what she has now. While she is living in a much better apartment and earning a good salary, she has not become happier.
Kenneth B. Clark, in his book, DARK GHETTO, tells of a number of blacks who returned to places like Watts, not because they failed in business, but because they failed in love.
In a ghetto they do not feel out-of-place because of their color and they know they will not have the problems that are caused by interracial affairs. Ghettos are populated by people of the same racial or ethnic strain.
Winnie resents the fact that she had been driven into the arms of a black man she didn't like, to show her fellow hospital workers she hadn't become a lover of Whitey because she spent a few sexual hours with a white man.
If she had been white herself she could've taken the gossip in stride, but, as a black person, she had to prove that she did not hate her own race because of the affair.
Franklin Frazier, in his book, BLACK BOURGEOISE, states that it is a secret fear of middle-class blacks to be thought of as Uncle Toms by blacks in the lower income groups simply because they no longer live in Negro ghettos.
To prove that they are still loyal to their race, these middle-class blacks sometimes go out of their way to show they are not dependent on whites financially and emotionally.
The quickest way to show this is by rejecting the friendships of whites and associating, socially and sexually, with their own kind. This is what Winnie did when she took Amos on as a lover after the gossip spread in the hospital that she was a sexual slave to Whitey.
Eventually the nurse will mature to a point where she will no longer have fears about what either the whites or blacks think and fall in love with anyone she wants to. Winnie realizes that love in both communities is difficult enough to find.