MY AFFLICTION

 

 

This is ugly.  I don’t know where or how to begin,,,but here goes.  I have a terrible affliction.  I’m addicted to picking cotton.  (I’m white)

It started years ago when I was living in the deep South.  I was on a sail boat that was at anchor.  I’d sleep  up forward in the V-berth.  There was a hatch just above me.  The boat would orientate itself into the wind so when I opened the hatch I’d get a cool breeze that made sleeping easy…except.

….except…in the dog days of summer, the last six weeks of summer.  It would be down right stinking hot.  You’d sweat like a pig constantly.  Usually I could sleep pretty good but not then.  I’d lay there all night long sweating.  Maybe I’d catch a couple of hours sleep before the sun came up.  When it did it got real hot.

I’d lay there at night thinking about the poor slaves and what a hell it must have been picking cotton in the heat.  The more I thought about it the worse it got till I started having this over whelming urge to purge my white guilt by picking cotton.

Then the heat broke and the urge disappeared.  The next year in the dog days I started getting the urge again.  It got so bad one night I rowed ashore and drove around looking for a cotton field. I drove around all night but could not locate a field.  It was really starting to bother me so much I couldn’t do with out it. I just had to pick some cotton.  It was like I needed a fix.

Then it got really hot and I couldn’t sleep.  I jumped in my car and headed to a place someone told me had a cotton field.

I found it.  Row upon row of beautiful cotton balls shining in the moon light.  I started picking as fast as I could.  I was sweating like a pig but was really getting into it.  I didn’t have a sack so I stuffed the cotton into my pockets, then my shirt and pants.  When there was no room left I just threw them on the ground.  It was exhilarating.

When the sky began to lighten I laid down exhausted.  It was like I had intense sex.  I dosed off.  I suspect that I experienced a spontaneous, nocturnal emission.

A guard woke me up and was really pissed about all the cotton on the ground.  I left the field and went looking for my car.  I wasn’t sure where I had left it.  I wandered down the road next to the field.

I thought I heard something.  It turned out to be some dark folks, a little way back into the woods. They were softly humming, “swing low sweet chariot” when along came a black sheriff who had been called by the guard.  I was arrested and put in jail.

I was sentenced to six months and was put on a work gang with a lot of blacks.  road work mostly.  No cotton.

I was o.k. till next summer.  I was alright till it got stinken’ hot then the urge would start again.  I couldn’t take it and went looking for a field.  This time I was smarter and took along a sack but didn’t keep the cotton I would dump it in the field and leave it.  It wasn’t about the cotton.  It was about the act of picking.

I liked it.  I really got off on it.  I was careful to hide my car and make sure no one was around.  I’d do a couple of fields in a week.

Then one night I heard something.  At first I wasn’t sure what it was.  It seem to go away when I tried to listen.  Eventually I realized what it was.  It sounded like a lot of people softly humming…

Swing low sweet chariot…..!!!

I cried when I heard it.  Summer was almost over and the temperatures started to drop.  I only got the urge when it was real hot.

Next year I was at it again.  I had been picking for a couple of hours when I thought I heard something but wasn’t sure what it was.  An animal maybe.  A possum perhaps.  Then I heard it again.

It seemed to be coming from the next row so I took a peek.  There in the moon light was a morbidly obese black woman, completely naked except for a bandanna on her head.

She was picking my cotton.  Then she saw me and waddled over and introduced herself.  Her name was Mabel.  She asked if I wanted to pick cotton together so I said sure.

By morning we had picked a mountain of cotton. We laid down in it to take a break before I had to leave.  She asked me if I had ever been with a “woman of color” before.  I had to confess I had not.  She wanted to know if I would like to try it on the mountain of cotton we picked.  I declined.

Suddenly her attitude changed and she became verbally abusive. I decided to leave, but before I could get up she grabbed me and started groping me.  She was very  big and I was un-able to get up out of that mountain of cotton.

She held me down and smothered me. I got an erection.  She got all excited and took me in a brutal manner.  Semen and cotton are not a good combination. Sticky, sticky, sticky.

I had nightmares for a long time.  In them she kept asking if I had ever been with a woman of color before.  It took six months of intensive therapy to work thru it.