The End Of Diversity - How A Faux Pimp In Drag Stopped Harris, Jones & Parker In Their Tracks

'Diversity this, diversity that', shouted Phelps Woolsey, 'I've had enough', but he was swimming against a strong tide.  No matter how much storied family legacy, no matter his Princeton education, and no matter his unshakeable principles, he was tossed ashore with all the rest of the sea's trash.

Take Cleopatra Jackson, foisted on him as an Administrative Assistant with nothing to recommend her, dressed like a floozy, décolleté down to two enormous breasts, weight-lifter's thighs, and a shelf as high as the Andes.  A recently transitioned man, internship at a South Beach Cage Aux Folles, and recently straightened out for a high five figure sinecure at a Washington firm, she was as badass as they come. 

'We've got to hire her', said the Managing Director, 'or the feds will be on us like a bad suit; and our numbers are not looking good." He had hired Fatima N'diaye, a Senegalese Sorbonne graduate, hoping she would put government monitors off the trail, but since the District had clamped down on this 'racial trickery' - using African PhDs instead of inner city mommas - and were monitoring the firm carefully to assure compliance, the firm had to comply. 

'In fact', he went on, 'she is worth ten straight black women.  All diversity boxes can be checked in one fell swoop'. 

Cleopatra came highly recommended - that is, she was a cousin of City Council Member Pharoah Jones, representative from Ward 8, Marion (The Bitch Set Me Up) Barry's old ward, 100 percent black, ghetto-poor, and restive.  Walkin' around money was nothing but chicken feed to the pimps and drug posses of the neighborhood. 

 

So along with no-show hires, entitlement cash, and infrastructure renewal, the neighborhood wanted some in-your-face hustling of the white man.  Although the macho community could care less about who fucked who and thought the whole idea of transgenderism was dick-cutting nonsense, sending the bitch to white, straight, rich Washington would be just the thing. 

Harris, Jones & Parker was picked because the chief partner had fallen under the spell of President Biden's Assistant For Diversity Affairs, a drop-dead beautiful octoroon from St. Barthelemy who, the K Street scuttlebutt had it, was the mistress of Congressman X, an influential member of the House Ways and Means Committee who had promoted her for the White House job. 

Now, the Biden woman, no celibate, one-man kind of girl, saw opportunity and profit at Harris, Jones & Parker and the nose-open, black-loving, dreamer Harris as an easy mark, and settled into an affair with him. 

Lucretia, as beautiful as she was, was no rich girl.  She was from the slums of St. Bart's, had angled her way from bed to bed to get up and out of the island and to El Norte and was not beyond a little mischief.  Cleopatra was her little secret. She in fact, reminded her of her pimp and lover in the islands, Francois, macho man, supreme lover and benefactor, a resemblance not surprising because Cleopatra, before she became a woman was indeed an Anacostia pimp, Cadillac, bling, spinners, mink et al. 

Meanwhile poor Phelps had to watch helplessly as Cleopatra rolled her eyes at him, sashayed from cubicle to conference room, painted her nails and fixed her lipstick all day long, while his inbox piled up with the bad leads, offers, and policy papers that he intended to turn over to a real administrative assistant. 

'Cleopatra', he asked politely and quite deferentially, 'might you do one or two things for me, light lifting really, a bit of triage and vetting, nothing that can't wait, but if it were possible and if you were willing, might you please have a look at my emails?'

'Why honey, I'd love to, but I have an appointment with Mr. Andrews on the 5th floor, but I'll be back in a jif', she answered. 

Sterling Andrews was a closeted gay man who picked away at his lunch like a bird, dreamed of Mr. Right all day, but was a wizard with spreadsheets and therefore coddled by the firm.  When Cleopatra showed him some attention, he saw right through her disguise and got a hard-on just thinking about the man underneath.  Those thighs!

Of course when Cleopatra returned from the 5th floor she had no intention of working, but Phelps, taught by the firm's DEI Officer to respect and understand the different cultures and environments from which new, alternate hires had come - or face immediate censure, loss of pay, and possible dismissal - demurred and did the scut work himself. 

At the end of his rope, angry and increasingly hostile, he kept dreaming about the awful things he would do to Cleopatra and how he would drop an H-bomb on everything east of the Anacostia River.  He was agitated and sleepless, but the pay was good and aside from Cleopatra, he liked his job.  

Not in a 'it's either her or me' position, he would have to work out an emotional compromise; but there she would always be, painting her toenails, pasting on a new set of eyelashes, topping up her lipstick and listening to Drake and Yeat not quietly but on a bloody loud Sonos mini. 

But surprise, surprise! Rumblings began over martinis at Old Ebbitt Grill. Everyone from Accounting to Contracts was sick and tired of Cleopatra Jackson and the firm's entire DEI horseshit, gay men and black women sashaying and clicking their heels, every facilitator a person of color, every meeting, workshop, seminar, or conference headlined by some race or gender hero.  Enough is enough. 

The rumblings were heard in the boardroom, and the directors met in a special session to review the firm's now questioned DEI policy.  The board, stacked with race- and gender-conscious advocates, was not an easy sell; but there were enough older, conservative members to at least shake the timbers of the old girl, and the CEO agreed to begin to dismantle the DEI program, starting, thank God, with Cleopatra Jackson who received a generous severance package and sterling recommendations. 

She of course was quite happy with it all.  She had never intended or expected to be long at Harris, Jones & Parker, so took the money and went back to Anacostia where her brothers and sisters greeted her warmly.  After she distributed half of the severance pay to the community, and settled in to her duplex on Carolina Avenue, she decided that this whole transition thing had been a really, really good idea.