I was working at Red Lobster about three years ago as a fry cook and dishwasher on the evening shift. Anyone who has ever worked for a restaurant full of college students can tell you what the environment is like. During work the guys discuss their weekends of getting loaded and they brag about what waitress they had sex with the night before and many of them are not shy about naming names. Most of the ladies aren’t much different except the fact that they are a little more secretive about whom they tell their business to. I was the only black man working there at the time, which doesn’t matter too much to me except that everyone comes to me looking for a good hook up on pot. I ignored them for a few months but after a while I started to calculate how much extra money I could be making if I went back to a little small time hustle on the side and it wasn’t long before I was their guy. (Don’t act surprised about this little sliver of information because I have put these things behind me now but at the time getting money as quick as possible was usually my only concern.) I have given you a little insight on the atmosphere during work, but a few more months down the line and I am now knee deep in their world. Behind Red Lobster there is a Brown Derby and at least seven people would run over before, during, and after work to get a case of beer or the liquor of their choice. So everyday after work became a party, and after a while nothing seemed to matter so much. I was making money and I had a decent job and I had a woman that loved me down to my dirty underwear and I was content with things to a certain degree.
One Friday I went to this huge party at one of my co-workers places and I sold my pot and I had a few beers, and things were going how I expected them to go. One of the girls I worked with introduced me to a cousin of hers and I assumed she wanted to get high because this girl was the type to always want to get something for free. We talked and I waited for the begging to begin but it never came, she just wanted to get to know me, and right then and there I should have left, but my spider sense wasn’t tingling at all. There was no small voice telling me to check my watch because my girlfriend is sitting at home alone expecting me any minute. I can’t even try to blame the alcohol in my system because I never get that intoxicated but that night I was unfaithful. Not only that but I sat and enjoyed the entire party, sold almost a half pound of pot in four hours, and let her drive me to her house as if I was a single man. I had sex with that woman and I passed out in her bed until the next morning.
What do you say to the person you care about when you’ve cheated on them? Do you try and cover your tracks so that they never find out the truth and in the process dig a hole of lies? Or do you tell them the truth and deal with the consequences like a man. I knew what I should have done but instead of taking the road less traveled, I took the trail of the guilty and I lied to her, I told the best lie I could develop in the twenty minutes it took me to get home. In my heart I believe she knew the truth before I ever started talking.