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The Writer

By: sun_sea_sky



He was invisible. He was used to that. His own children were grown up now, but when they were teenagers, and had friends around, they treated him as if he had accidentally slipped off into another dimension. He was just 'the dad'. Completely uninteresting. What would he know? Old, a bit overweight, thinning hair. Boring.

He had been invited to dinner at John and Sally's place. Old friends he had known for ages from work. He was introduced to their 20-year old daughter Emma. 'Hi,' she said in a flat voice, her eyes immediately moving away from his face to something that actually existed in her world. He kept his smile painted on his face, and joined his friends in the kitchen as they prepared dinner. They had invited him over, feeling sorry for him now that his wife had left him. A cousin, they had lined him up with Sally's cousin.

He sighed. At least he would get some adult conversation, and maybe the cousin would look OK, not be too dumb, at least help the evening to pass. Anything to help stop him thinking about his loneliness, now that his wife had left him for another woman. Once again he ground his teeth together. Another woman!

They moved into the comfy chairs, drinking beer and sipping wine. He relaxed a bit into the chair and glanced around at the room, letting the conversation wash over him a bit, like the surf at the beach. It would come his way, and then burble away. His hosts pointed out a new print they had got for their wall. He swiveled around quickly to see it, was surprised to see Emma looking at him from behind. Huh? How long had she been there?

The look was a bit strange, appraising, analytical even. It was if she was measuring him in some way, for some purpose. But what? As their eyes met she looked away, quickly left the room, flushing slightly. She had been caught doing something, something embarrassing. His eyes followed her shapely bottom as she left, his brain briefly switching into 'sex mode'. Enough of that, this was hopeless. Time to get a proper girlfriend, get some action back into his sex life. Before he wore out his hand.

The phone rang, Sally answered, looked disappointed. 'Meredith can't make it,' she said. 'Oh well, now we have you all to our own,' she smiled brightly.

'Damn,' he thought. Not even a chance of gazing at, maybe, a good-looking woman tonight. Well there was Sally, but he couldn't afford to stare at her in front of her husband. His thoughts wandered back to his new hobby, writing. Maybe he could turn the evening into a plot, somehow. Damned if he could think how though.

Sally got up to finish the dinner preparation, calling her husband to help her serve up. His eyes followed them both. Now that he had been writing he started seeing people in a different light. Plot fodder. He wondered if their marriage was OK. How often they fucked. In what positions. He tried to undress her with his eyes. This was safe because they had their backs to him. He wondered idly who wore the pants in the relationship.

Suddenly a twinge of recognition! Appraising them for plots, wondering about their sex life, undressing them mentally. It's almost as if that was what Emma had being doing when she watched him, earlier. Ridiculous, though. What would a young woman be doing, writing erotica? Heck, he knew absolutely no-one else that did it.

While they carved up the roast, and finished preparing the vegetables, his mind wandered back to the day he had found Literotica ...

----------------

How long ago was it? Five years? He was still married then, but their love life was practically non-existent. He had found solace in porn, spending evenings browsing site after site. Link after link, pushing him further into sub-categories he didn't even know existed.

The porn was OK, but after a while it had all seemed the same. Then out of boredom, and following another obscure link, he had stumbled across Literotica. Huh? Just text? Forget it. No-one ever 'came' from reading a story. Men needed pictures, images, tits, movement. Not reading. That was for women. Middle-aged women at that.

Still, he had read one story. It was better than he had expected. He had felt slightly aroused. Maybe try another one. Better again. Then he had found a fairly lengthy one, involving a son trying to seduce his mother, where they were not actually fucking by the second paragraph. He had started getting interested. The story was a tease, he had started to wonder if they would ever do it. Or would the son's father notice? Or join in?

He recalled that his cock had started tingling. He had dropped his free hand onto his pants and gently massaged the bulge. As the story progressed his hand had moved inside his pants, onto the top of his jocks. More story. The story had become more intense. He had moved his hand onto his cock, had felt its warmth, pulsing. His hand couldn't stop moving.

He remembered that suddenly it had all became too much. He had whipped his cock out and vigorously jerked it. Damn and blast! The sticky cum had shot straight out over the keyboard, and onto the screen. Fuck, fuck, fuck! That had never happened before! Guiltily he had cleaned himself up, stuffed his cock back into his pants, and cleaned up the keyboard and monitor. 

He had resolved not to underestimate the erotic power of the written word again, and had started revisiting the site more often.

----------------

'Dinner's ready,' Sally said. 'Can you go tell Emma please?'

With an effort he jerked himself back into the present. Glanced down to check his recollection hadn't started up anything obvious in his pants, and wandered down the house looking for Emma's room. The door was open, he knocked quietly and went in.

She was sitting at her desk using her laptop. As she saw him entering she suddenly gave a guilty look and quickly closed the lid. As it was closing he glanced at it. Surely she hadn't been looking at Literotica! The distinctive blue border and 'Erotic Stories' text down the side looked familiar. He raised his eyebrows in surprise. 

'Dinner's ready, I'm to tell you,' he said, looking slightly dazed.

She blushed. 'Be there in a minute.' She joined them shortly after.

Over dinner his hosts asked him what he did for a hobby these days. 'Oh, a bit of writing,' he responded.

'What sort? Detective stories?'

'Nah, just action, adventure, that sort of thing,' he replied. 'I've not published anything though,' he lied. Apart from to Literotica he thought to himself. And 'adventure' wasn't too far off describing what he was writing now.

He remembered how he had progressed from reading stories to wondering what it would be like to write one. He would probably be hopeless, he knew. But maybe worth trying. He had penned one of his fantasies, nothing that had actually happened, but something that would have been fun, if it had. Spent a week revising, tweaking, checking. He had submitted it. It didn't get a fabulously big score, but it didn't 'bomb' either. Encouraged, he had submitted more stories. Also found the community on the Literotica forum a friendly, interesting bunch, somewhat to his surprise.

So, he was writer. A writer of erotica. None of his friends or family knew that. A couple of them, he had told he wrote 'short stories'. To be on the safe side he had quickly written a pretty bad pure adventure yarn, in case someone wanted to read one. It was a bit of a lonely life. No wife, and his hobby a guilty secret. 

He looked across at Emma, eyebrows very slightly raised. She had been glancing back at him.

'Surely,' Emma was thinking, 'he couldn't have recognized that site! My parents would never understand. No-one understands.' Strangely, she had gone through a similar epiphany herself a couple of years ago. Discovering Literotica. Reading it. Getting sexual release from it. And starting to write her own stuff. She was very cautious, not disclosing her gender, using a public email address solely for that purpose, and keeping her stories securely on a USB stick hidden away in her handbag.

John said proudly, 'Emma writes too.' 

She glared at him, 'Dad!'

'Sure she does,' John continued. 'Adventure stuff too, I believe. Always tapping away on her laptop.'

Emma had made up a story of being an 'adventure writer' to explain the lengthy amount of time she was sitting at her PC, typing. She also had written a non-erotic 'cover story' in case they wanted to see what she had been doing. 

The writer looked at Emma, smiling. 'You write adventures too? Maybe we both write the same sort? Can I take a look at your work after dinner?'

Before Emma could say 'certainly not', her mother jumped in with 'I'm sure Emma would love to, wouldn't you dear?' Emma nodded her had a fraction. Trapped! At least she had the cover story.

----------------

After dinner he joined Emma in her bedroom. The door was still open, of course.

'You know, Emma, maybe we are interested in the same thing,' he started to explain. 'Let me tell you a bit about myself for a minute. I write stories, but most people don't know about them because they are, well, a little unusual. I respect your privacy, you don't have to tell me anything at all. But let me tell you something else. I get lonely not being able to talk to another human being about my writing. My friends, my brothers and sisters, they wouldn't approve. I can chat on the forum on the site I write for, but that isn't quite the same thing as talking to a real person, face to face.

'I feel amongst friends on the site I publish on. They don't condemn me, and I feel accepted there. It's strange though, the site has a rather distinctive web site layout that looks very similar to the one I thought you were looking at when I came into your room before. If you need a friend to chat about writing to, I would love to talk. I need someone to chat about my ideas with too. If not, that's fine. I'll understand. You are much younger than me, and probably feel embarrassed at what I am saying.'

He sat back and waited calmly for her to digest what he had said. Half a minute passed, she seemed to be wrestling with some inner turmoil. He smiled, 'the absence of a denial from you is coming across as confirmation, you know.' He leaned forward slightly, 'I'll be candid with you, maybe that will help. I write erotic stories, they are published on Literotica. I'm not some sex-crazed dirty old man, I just enjoy doing it.' 

He folded his arms, 'you can tell me to get out, if that makes you more comfortable. I feel more relaxed with myself now than I did when I was 20, so I probably understand some of what you are feeling. But perhaps you aren't ready to talk about it right now.' 

He moved towards the door.

'Wait,' she said in a small voice. 'You are right, I do write erotic stories. But you are the first person I have told to their face. Stay and chat, please? How did you guess?'

'Well, I thought you were checking me out for use as a character in one of your stories, before.' She nodded. 'I saw the web page, briefly. And your dad let slip you are a writer. What got you started?' he asked.

'I've always been interested in sex,' she explained, turning to face him. 'Both physically and emotionally. But I've had very little actual experience. I am nervous, for one thing, around boys, and I don't want to be thought of as easy. So instead I have been reading other writers' stories to help me get to sleep, and started writing my own, to live out some of my fantasies through my stories.' She looked down shyly.

She went on quietly, 'I'm afraid my stories aren't very good. I imagine romantic stuff, but the sexy details I'm a bit unsure about. I'm sure I've made a bit of a fool of myself a few times.'

'You'll improve,' he encouraged her. 'You just need more writing experience, and more -- er -- erotic experience as well.' He went a bit red. 'I better go back, your parents will be wondering about what we are up to.'

She stood up. 'You know, for the first time I've looked at you as a person, as a man, rather than Mum and Dad's friend. I wish we could talk for longer, but it would look strange here. Can I drive around to your place on the weekend and chat some more?'

'Sure,' he replied smiling. 'Here's the address and my phone number.' He jotted it down on a bit of paper. 'Now that I look at you,' he paused to do so at some length, 'you look like a woman to me now, not just someone's kid. A beautiful woman.' He winked.

She laughed. 'OK, I'll be in touch.'

Next weekend she dropped over at his house, after a quick phone call. She was looking a bit nervous. She brought her laptop, with a view to showing some of her stories she was working on.

'Hi Emma!' he greeted her. Come in and relax. 'I'm really pleased you came around to see me, it's great to be able to chat with someone about my hobby. Especially someone as lovely as you,' he flirted, grinning.

'Don't get carried away, Buster,' she retorted. 'I'm just here to talk. How old are you anyway? 100?'

'Almost,' he grinned.

They sat and chatted about writing, editing, submitting, waiting, and the sorts of responses they got from their readers. The house was fairly warm (he had cranked up the heating a bit) so she soon shed her top layers of clothing, and was just wearing a rather nice T-shirt which showed a bit of cleavage, and an attractively short skirt of what looked like fairly sheer material.

He too had made an effort with his clothing, which hadn't totally gone unnoticed.

After a while she asked him, 'so, what's your pen-name?'

He looked nervous. 'Not sure I should tell you, you might find the stories a bit shocking.'

'Aw, come on. After all I may already have read them.'

'OK, you tell me yours and I'll tell you mine.' She nodded. They exchanged pen-names.

They both picked up their laptops and spent the next hour reading each others' stories. Eyebrows were raised, as they glanced across at each other, smiling.

'Some fantasies, huh?' she commented. 'A whole lot of stories about older men and younger women?'

'Er, yes, just fantasy stories you understand,' he replied blushing slightly.

She smiled to herself. 'In for a penny, in for a pound,' she thought. 

'Hey Writer-Man!' she called to him, 'I think my kissing scenes are a little dull. Do you mind showing me how a real man kisses? The few boyfriends I have had were real wimps. Just a quick demonstration. Since we are both thinking about sex.'

He looked nervous. 'Are you sure? Look at the age difference. Maybe kids do it differently these days.'

She moved closer, he backed away, hit a wall. 'Come on, just a quick demo.' She reached for his face, grabbed it, and planted a long kiss on his mouth. Her kiss seemed a bit more self-assured than he was expecting. Especially when he got the tongue.

He tried to keep his hips clear of hers, so she wouldn't feel his rather obviously expanding cock up against her skirt. 'Come closer,' she whispered in exasperation, pulling him tight. Ooof! His cock got pushed straight between her legs. She sighed with pleasure, and kept giving him the tongue.

'Oh well, whatever,' he thought to himself, having picked up the teenage argot. He got back into the kiss, grinding up against her, and giving her the tongue as well.

Eventually he dragged himself backwards. 'I thought you wanted tuition?' he asked. 'You seem to be doing pretty damn well.'

'Well, I've read about doing that, so I thought it would be fun to try,' she giggled. 'And you're pretty good at it, too. Hey, I don't write for Literotica because I'm interested in astronomy you know. My sex drive is pretty strong. Trouble is I've been mainly flying solo until now. I wouldn't mind a lesson from an instructor.'

'Flying high,' he thought to himself, 'but whatever.'

'To be honest with you,' she went on, advancing on him, 'I've scared off the last couple of boyfriends. Wimps! Once I get a man in my hands my body kicks in.'

'I noticed.'

'The last one suddenly remembered a maths assignment. Had to leave suddenly. Grrr. But you, you know what you want. What a woman wants. Especially one interested in sex.' She got closer. 'I felt you getting bigger before. I've read all about that, I've watched porn, but I've never felt one doing it. Can I have a little grope?'

'Er ...'

'Come on, I won't bite. Here, sit next to me on the couch. Good. Now kiss me.' He did. She paused to whip off her T-shirt, showing off a fancy black bra. She got back into the kiss, her free hand exploring his inner thigh. 'Ooh, I see how it works now. Wow. Am I doing that to you?' Her hand moved over his bulge, touching, exploring, feeling.

'This is better than watching videos,' she continued, settling into the moment.

He was fast losing any semblance of control. This literary discussion afternoon was fast turning into something else. Something even more exciting than writing. He wondered vaguely if all Literotica writers were like this. He had his doubts.

Suddenly she stopped. 'Well, thanks for the lesson. Perhaps I better go now.' She stood up and slipped back into her T-shirt.

'What? Don't stop now. Please.' He pulled her to him passionately.

'Well, that's better. I was starting to wonder if you really wanted me.'

'Want you? Are you insane? Of course I want you. But this surely is wrong?' She responded by slipping her hands inside his pants and stroking his bum.

He slipped his hands under her T-shirt, around her back, unclipped her bra. She smiled broadly. 'That's more like it. Lose your T-shirt too, huh?'

He removed his own shirt, and they collapsed back onto the couch, breasts against bare chest, her nipples pushing against his chest hair. His mouth on hers, then seeking her tits. Licking, kissing, caressing. His mind drifted off into another dimension, one where he was having passionate sex. Wait. He was about to have it right now! He wrenched himself back to the here-and-now.

She pulled his jeans down, he shrugged them off. He pushed his cock, now restrained only by his jocks under her skirt and against her panties. He could feel the moisture. She started breathing more heavily, more quickly. Her eyes glazed over. He put his brain into neutral, let his cock go onto auto-pilot.

A couple more minutes of grinding and both jocks and panties went flying. A few seconds later he was buried inside her, pushing wildly into her, with her hands gripping his back like a madwoman. He exploded inside her, as she bucked wildly.

Slowly, sanity returned. 'Where am I?' he asked plaintively. 'What the fuck just happened?'

'I just got my first proper fuck,' she replied panting heavily. 'And it was great. Now I understand the difference between men and boys.'

'Let me show you something else,' he murmured, putting his hand between her legs. As he stroked her clit she relaxed onto the couch, closing her eyes, sweat glistening on her beautiful tits. He dropped down to his knees and started licking her wet cunt, getting a taste of his own cum. Her eyes flew open with surprise and then closed again. She moaned. His tongue flicked over her clit, causing her to buck and moan with pleasure. Suddenly she grabbed his head with both hands and held it hard against her as she jerked into her first orgasm with another person.

Things were quiet for a few minutes. 'That was fucking incredible,' she said softly. 'I've come plenty of times from my own hand but that was something else. Well, plenty of material now for my next story. And maybe you have some too.' He smiled.

'You'll come back soon to 'discuss' writing, won't you?' she grinned, looking deeply into his eyes. How could he resist?

'Maybe stay and we can have another 'chat' this evening?' he suggested, licking his lips.

'I'd like that.'



And that's what happens when Literotica writers get together!

The Writer



He was up against a deadline but she had other ideas.

This is entirely a work of fiction.

FELIX

He sweated over the deadline. The publisher had finally lost patience and his agent was on his back so here he was, holed up in a beach house located in this deserted out of season resort.

He got up, he wrote, he snacked then wrote again, he went out to eat dinner, he drank moderately on his return and then fell into bed only to repeat the same process day after day. By now whether it was a Saturday or a Wednesday, or any other day of the week come to that, had become utterly meaningless. The only decisions to be made were where to eat and when to Email each completed chapter to his long suffering editor.

This isolation was actually no big deal for he had always been a solitary man. Gone were the days when aching balls and an erection would force him out to look for female company and long gone were the youthful days when a hard on seemed to be ever present. 

He had been married once, for all of two years, but their individual needs had proved incompatible and resulted in an amicable parting. He had missed the companionship for a short time but soon reverted to his writing with the very occasional one night stand. 

Now far away from temptation he got deeper and deeper into the novel. 

ALICIA

The cab driver hauled the half dozen pieces of expensive matching luggage to the front porch and accepted the generous tip offered for his pains. She fiddled with the key in the darkness before eventually getting everything inside then finding the toilet. Later she collapsed on the bed seeking the oblivion she craved which annoyingly kept receding as her mind trawled unerringly over the stress of the last month or more.

However exhaustion eventually won out and she woke to full daylight having not thought to close the blinds. She lay prone feeling a mounting satisfaction at being away from her problems, of being free from the unbearable situation that had threatened to consume her completely, of being able at long last to please just herself.

By mid morning the weak winter sun had drawn her out onto the enclosed balcony. She was curious to see where she had ended up having picked the place from the realtor's list and completely unseen. The white sand of the beach stretched in both directions as far as the eye could see with timber steps leading down from this and the other properties. These appeared to number a dozen in all each served in turn by the macadam road. 

The luxury development had been built with generous space between the properties, each near enough to give a sense of security but far enough apart for privacy which was just as well for she was standing there naked as a jay bird. In the unheated space her nipples gradually hardened making her suddenly conscious of the temperature so she returned to the heated rooms and pulled on some exercise clothes before venturing once again to the veranda.

The whole settlement seemed to be shut up for the winter save for one beach house two doors away which had a travel stained 4x4 untidily parked out front. By craning out of an opened window she could see that the place had a similar enclosed balcony/terrace as her own but could detect no sign of movement.

FELIX

He had returned from a visit to the local Mart and was unloading his bags when a flat bed truck drew up and the driver shouted over. 

"I'm looking for No. 6?"

Felix straightened and turned in the direction of the voice apparently considering the matter carefully although his mind was actually elsewhere. He finally got it together and replied.

"This is No. 4 so try the next but one."

The driver raised a hand in salute as the writer went indoors with guilt forcing him back to his laptop.

ALICIA

She was naked and in the middle of her morning exercise regime when the doorbell stopped her dead. She pulled on a dressing gown to answer the summons.

"Alicia Forest?"

"That's me."

"Delivery for you."

She looked up to see her little foreign sports car perched on the back of the delivery truck and nodded in recognition.

"Sign here lady then if I can manage the stick shift I'll get the Porche onto your drive."

Later as she sat in her beloved drop head coupe she discovered in the glove box a reminder of the man who had made her life a living hell. But to her surprise it was less disturbing than might have been expected although she made a mental note to have the car professionally valeted to remove any possible reminders of the past. 

FELIX

It was inevitable that the occupiers of numbers 4 and 6 would at least became aware of each other during the ensuing weeks but it was also clear that neither had the least desire to acknowledge this fact nor even to strike up a conversation until one day they found themselves being sole diners in a local restaurant. He looked over from his table to see her concentrating hard on the menu probably equally embarrassed at the whole awkward situation.

"Will you join me?" 

She looked up on hearing the educated English voice so he persevered.

"It seems silly for us both to eat alone."

But did he really want to change the relationship? Did he even want female company? Could he be bothered to make small talk? Then he heard her reply and was immediately committed.

"Thank you. I will."

He reckoned the woman was East Coast but not New York, maybe Boston, but she was certainly easy on the eye and not being remotely a misogynist his mood brightened as she crossed the room.

There was a hiatus as they ordered and decided on a wine to drink but then she initiated the conversation.

"Why are you here out of season?" He blinked at the directness of the question causing her to backtrack. "I'm sorry. That was intrusive."

"No. There's no secret." He gathered his thoughts together in an effort not to ramble. "I'm a writer with a rapidly approaching dead line." 

He saw the obvious question appear in her eyes and replied before she could ask although fully expecting a blank reaction. 

"I'm Felix Lancaster."

Her face cleared when she obviously recognised the name.

"Oh my. I love your books but aren't you just doing film scripts these days?"

Now of a sudden she had risen in his estimation.

"A bit of both, but what do I call you?"

"Alicia Forest."

He stored that away and debated if he could risk trying to find out more for the closeness of this disturbing woman was beginning to give him ideas which did not bode well for his self imposed seclusion. 

Better perhaps to just enjoy her company while they ate and let the future take care of itself but as if to deny such a safe solution his dormant libido chose that moment to wake from slumber. Now he had to cope with a raging erection which had risen to greet this sensual woman.

Conversation ceased for a time as they were served a starter until he became conscious of her frank gaze measuring him.

"So you're finishing a novel?"

"Trying to, hence locking myself away from all temptation."

"But you still have to eat?" 

Eventually they drove home in their separate transport and without having made any arrangement to meet again.

He finally fell asleep imagining Alicia cradled in his arms and with fresh semen staining his boxers.

ALICIA

Don't start she had thought to herself at one point there in the restaurant. Okay so he's a bloody attractive man but ignore the messages being sent by your hormones. You don't need any more trouble in your life. Just keep it casual.

But her sleep that night was disturbed and fragmentary ending in her pacing the floor with her mind racing.

"I am not obsessed with sex." 

Alicia had eventually shouted out in defiance of her disbelieving body.

"It must be four years since I've cum with a man in me so is it surprising that I feel deprived?"

The words echoed around the scantily furnished sitting room before she eventually found relief with a vibrator.

.............

It was now a fortnight since she had eaten that meal with Felix and despite the occasional view of his figure in the distance they had not spoken again. 

But her desire to know him better, which dated from that night, had not cooled. Given her reluctance to become involved it had increased, particularly after she had found some of his novels in the local bookstore and devoured them each at a single sitting.

Just the mere thought of him composing the words of the novel now open in her lap was enough to make the juices flow, but wait, if she took her daily walk along the beach then with luck she might even catch a glimpse of the author. 

FELIX

It was no good. He had been staring at the same sentence for ten minutes or more unable to progress any further. Alicia's firm athletic body kept intruding into his thoughts, the line of her neck as he had helped her into a coat, the thrust of her breasts as she had risen from the table, the subtle waft of perfume which rose from her hair, and that backside enclosed in a tight skirt which had moved so voluptuously.

Abandoning work he went out to his glassed in terrace where serendipitously he caught sight of the woman who now filled his waking thoughts and breathlessly watched her progress along the water line.

She had obviously just retuned from a run, her daily purposeful trip which she made up and down the hard packed sand within the tide range. Now she had paused to sit on the steps which led up to her house where she was bent on removing each trainer in turn to tip out the sand before retying the laces.

"Oh god," he cried out as he came hunched over his hand.

ALICIA

Now indoors and with her cheeks flushed from the exercise she was convinced she had caught sight of Felix as she was dealing with her shoe laces. It was only his head and shoulders but it was enough. She shucked off her clothes and while under the hot shower made a plan.

He answered at the fifth ring.

"Hello?"

It was a moment before she could steady herself enough to reply as her hand moved purposely inside her panties.

"It's Alicia. From number 6."

"Oh Hi, how are you?"

"Okay thanks. How are you doing...err...err...with the deadline?"

Had he heard the uncontrolled catch in her voice as she orgasmed?

"I think I'm winning." 

"So are you eating out tonight?"

There was a long pause before he replied during which she nearly despaired.

"Why not? I'll pick you up at seven."

There was a click as he replaced the phone in it's cradle.

..............................

The inside of his 4x4 was like a tip and she was forced to move discarded cartons and scrunched up paper to make room for her feet before gingerly depositing her backside on the seat fearful that her light coloured pants would be marked. He smiled at her nervousness although making no effort to apologise, but tonight she would forgive him anything.

He took her to the same place but this time there were two other tables already occupied.

"Even so," she looked around graphically as they were being seated, "this place is hardly jumping."

FELIX

Later as they ate, and totally against his avowed intent, he grew curious.

"So what brought you to this out of the way place?"

She was silent for so long that he became convinced she had found the question intrusive but then opened up although keeping her eyes fixed on his as if to gauge his reaction.

"I was only very recently divorced. 'Forest' is my married name so I will revert to my own as soon as the papers are registered and everything has gone through."

Impulsively he reached out and placed a hand over hers which interestingly she did not try to withdraw.

"I'm sorry to hear that. It must have been a difficult time for you."

At this he saw a flash of pain cross her face but soon realised that he had entirely misunderstood the cause.

"Difficult yes but not for the reasons you might assume. In fact I divorced him just as soon as I had incontestable proof of infidelity."

Silence reigned for a period as he digested this statement which although so flatly delivered must have caused if not regret then at least some disillusion. 

"So did he fight his corner?"

"Oh boy didn't he just, but the Prenup agreement thankfully proved watertight when the bastard had it tested."

So she was the one with the money. He poured more wine for them both but then a new thought occurred to him. 

"So what should I call you when the divorce is all signed and sealed?"

What was the matter with him? Was he thinking that there would be further contact between them?

"Alicia Carson."

He was still regretting his question even as she gave her maiden name so the realisation of who this mystery woman actually took more than a minute to penetrate.

"Ah, of course, you must be the heir to "Carson Oil". Petroleum and all that...Is that why he married you?

"Undoubtedly, but it took time for me to catch on."

"Oh fuck. That explains everything." This initial reaction was forced out of him before the cogs in his brain began turning again. "So you own that beach house?"

"Yes, well no, not quite yet. The papers are being exchanged as we speak."

Silence fell until Felix couldn't contain his curiosity.

"So it took a long time before you realised he was sleeping around."

"I was too young, too foolish to realise what he really wanted and in the end not woman enough to retain his interest."

Felix raised one eyebrow expressively at the suggestion that anyone might consider her 'not woman enough' and she grinned back.

"I just mean that he went elsewhere for his preferred form of sexual relief ignoring the fact that I was going up the wall with frustration. But even though that was bad enough he also spent my money like it was water. I was brought up to appreciate its value but not him. Anyway I eventually got up the nerve to rebel and now he's gone from my life."

.....................

Felix dropped her off then disappeared into his house. He was fleeing from the problems he could foresee if he was foolish enough to get involved with such a woman and got straight on the phone to his agent back in London.

"Hello." 

The voice which eventually replied did not sound overly friendly.

"Belinda, it's Felix. I'm sorry if I've messed up on the time difference."

"It's okay Felix. I've just got up. You know what I'm like before I've had a fix of caffeine."

"Listen luv, I reckon four weeks max until I've knocked this book on the head and I can then get back to earning some real money."

And no more flirting with Miss Moneybags was his secondary thought as he forlornly sought his bed.

"Get a grip of yourself," he told himself but at least had enough humour left to laugh at the accuracy of the remark as he fisted his erection.

......................

The weather began to improve from then on although Felix scarcely noticed the change. By dint of fierce concentration during the daylight hours he was close to completing the text. No breaks were allowed until nightfall, just solid attention to his keyboard.

ALICIA

She welcomed the change in the weather which caused a lightening of her spirits. The increase in temperature widened her scope for exercise which had lately become better than an opiate. Equally pleasurable was having on more than one occasion successfully entered Felix"s house directly from the beach (he never thought to lock those doors) and, totally unseen by the toiling writer, vicariously watched him concentrating exclusively upon his computer screen. 

Alicia pondered not only on her new and seemingly outlandish behaviour but also on her recent past. Life with her husband had been nothing but a long-running disappointment. At a time when her body was ripe for the attentions of a real man that had been denied for even when he had deigned to mount her it was "wham bam" and never a "thank you" leaving her totally frustrated. How she had been such a stupid cow as to marry him in the first place was a mystery but one from which she was now released.

Lately she had become increasingly confident that somewhere out there must be a man who would heal her hurt and now she became convinced that it was Felix Lancaster. After all he came with the great advantage of an educated brain allied to a body which effortlessly thrilled her to the very core, both of which augured well for any relationship.

But how to get Felix to commit?

Simple, she decided. Just take the bull by the horns.

FELIX

He woke to discover his erection enveloped in a soft but greedy mouth. At first he thought he was having a wet dream and was savouring the moment but reality soon seeped in. He flicked on the light to discover a blond helmet moving between his legs.

"Alicia is that you?"

Understandably there was no reply.

"How did you get in?"

She merely continued on her self imposed mission.

"For god's sake stop doing that and come up here."

So saying he pulled her up beside him which was when she spoke for the first time.

"Do you like that, darling?"

"Of course I do. Who wouldn't. But what are you doing here?"

"Well if you have to ask then I don't hold out much hope for you as a writer."

She giggled but he would not melt.

"I can't afford to get involved with someone like you."

Now he had come to the nitty-gritty but she seemed to have a ready answer.

"You are not getting involved in anything unless you really want to. For the moment can't we just enjoy each other? You know you want to fuck me and god knows I want it just as much, so just shut up and get on with it."

He groaned unable to resist and reached out for her ready body. 

Much later they lay sated until he broke the peaceful mood.

"Did you call me 'darling'?"

"I might have."

She was now on the defensive but he blunted the attack.

"I liked being called that...providing you really meant it?"

"Trust me, I meant it."

"Listen Alicia, I have a confession to make."

"And me but you go first."

"I've wanted to do this ever since we first met and I'm not ashamed to say that I've masturbated while thinking of doing just this." 

"What a pair of fools we have been."

She wriggled about beneath him only to react in surprise when his erection reappeared.

"So soon my darling?" 

Then later when that bout was over she also confessed.

"I bet you didn't masturbate as often as me. Women can cum far more often than any man"

ALICIA

It was morning when she woke to find that he had already brewed coffee for them both.

"Look I know you've got to finish the novel and I've got to fly East to sign a load of papers but can I come back and see you in a couple of weeks?"

She was clearly as near to pleading as any proud woman could but his reply delighted her.

"Yes please."

...........................

Alicia turned into the private road fully expecting No. 4 to be closed up and his 4x4 gone but to her relief all was just as before. He even came out onto the porch before she was level with the house and his smile of greeting caused tears to sting her eyes.

The car was abandoned half across the road in her hurry to be in his arms and it was only very much later before she thought to retrieve it.

The sex which had been initiated almost before Alicia crossed the threshold had been even better than she had been anticipating during the long flight Westwards so she had to tear herself from his bed to open up her house again.

....................

"Have you finished the novel?" 

They were seated at the restaurant table which was now becoming familiar.

"Yup, all done and sent off for correcting."

But how to frame the difficult question upon which all her hopes rested? Best to just go straight for it.

"So what's next?"

"That depends entirely upon you."




The Writer



The pent up breath left her body in an audible sigh as she grabbed at his hand.

"Are you by any chance suggesting that we become an item?"

"I suppose so but only if we can agree on some important ground rules."

"Ground rules?"

"Yes. Like I wont live off you, and I must be allowed to shut myself away when I'm writing, oh... and similar stuff."

"Well I can cope with that, but I warn you that I will need very regular sex."

"So maybe we can rub along together?"

"Then let's do it."

She watched him smile beatifically and then raise his free hand to summon the hovering waitress. 

"Do you by any chance have a bottle of half decent Champagne in this place?" 

THE END



The Writer



"Whatcha writing?" Sara inquired as she walked into the office where I stared intensely at a blank screen.

"Not much of anything yet I'm afraid." I replied. "I saw this ad on the Internet for an adult website. They're looking for erotic fiction so I thought, what the hell, I'd give it a shot."

"Erotic fiction? Geez Sam, that's quite a change of pace for you... although, I always said you could write me right out of my panties." Sara laughed and stood behind my chair. Running her hands down my chest she lightly kissed my neck. Her touch and smell were invigorating. 

"I'm afraid for once I'm at a loss for words. I want to submit something a little classier than some weak ass storyline with dialog such as "Ooh Baby, give it to me, give it to me now... fuck me, fuck me harder." 

"What's wrong with that dialog? It sounds like me last night." Sara laughed again. "Since when has Sam the man ever had trouble coming up with words?"

"Ah, you know how nervous I get when I'm writing. I just don't want to fuck this up."

"I think I know what your problem is. You need something to inspire your writing." She ran her hands down my chest again and teasingly grazed the top of my crotch. 

"I'm not sure how this will help me write," I said half-heartedly attempting to concentrate on my work. I could feel her nipples, now hard, pressing into my back.

"Well, I just think if you're going to write about fishing, you should go fishing. You want to write about cooking, you should cook. And, if you want to write about fucking... well?"

I could see Sara's reflection in my monitor. Her evil little smile was to die for.

"Well, I see your point but I'm still not convinced." I wasn't very good at playing hard to get but fortunately Sara didn't care.

"Let me see if I can change your mind." She turned my office chair around so that I was facing her. She was beautiful in her red halter-top and white cutoff shorts.

Sara knelt in front of me while slowly and seductively unbuckling my belt. Quickly taking care of the clasp and zipper on my pants she reached through the opening in my boxers and grabbed my cock, which she began to massage never taking her eyes off mine. Her face bore the excitement of a teenager who had snuck her boyfriend in to fuck while her parents slept in the next room. 

"Are you getting inspired yet?" she asked?

"Oh, I think I feel the creative juices beginning to flow. You're right, this is good therapy for writer's block." I could do little to hide my excitement. The anticipation was killing me and Sara knew it.

"You know how I love your creative juices." Sara laughed aloud again and pulled my ass closer to the front edge of the chair. Motioning for me to lift myself up she pulled my pants and boxers down paroling my cock from confinement. Taking the tip of her tongue she traced the inside of my leg until she reached my scrotum and finally on up to the head of my cock. She tarried, licking around the head finding that little reservoir that generally gives a preamble of what's to come, no pun intended. Sara loved giving oral sex as much as receiving it. As I man I can always tell when a woman blowing me really wants me to cum, and when she really doesn't. Sara was on a mission.

Her mouth engulfed the head of my cock and slowly and deliberately she began moving up and down my shaft. She tossed her long hair from side to side and moaned and slurped with the uninhibited glee of a porn star. She knew I loved it. Her hands ran with abandon across my torso, inside my legs, massaging my balls. Wrapping her fingers around my cock she masturbated me into her mouth while continuing her magic with her mouth and tongue. She stopped long enough to look into my eyes. The giddiness of earlier had been replaced by a hunger and determination.

"Cum to Mamma baby, don't make me wait." 

She never looked more beautiful. Resuming, she intensified her efforts and I could feel that wonderful familiar pressure building. As I began to cum it excited her more and she pumped my cock faster and faster into her waiting mouth. My entire body felt spastic, as my orgasm seemed to go on forever. Finally I was spent and Sara released my cock from her mouth pausing to give the head a final kiss. Just a trace escaped the corner of her lips, which she seductively licked it off and smiled. Standing and turning to leave she loosened her shorts and dropped them at my feet with her panties quickly following. Pulling her halter top off as she walked out of the office toward our bedroom she turned and grinned.

"I think you have your story now. Let me know if I can be of more help." 

Sara left the room, my eyes following her perfect ass and noticing the wetness glistening between her legs. Rushing after her I knew she was right. I had my story. I would type it all in later. For now, however, I had an idea for another storyline I wanted to work on. 



The Writer



Just a short story about an author beginning to write erotic stories. Thanks again to 'Omegazone' for editing my story. Not a lot of sex, but some humor.

This story will be a dialog between a husband and his wife. H=Husband, W=Wife

*

H-As I was sitting at the computer in my office, I have a home office, my wife appeared at the door.

W-What are you doing?

H-Writing a story.

W-What do you mean writing a story? You're not a writer.

H- Unfortunately a lot of readers agree with you.

W-Readers? What readers?

H- On this web site, a writer can send in stories and people read them. Then the readers can tell them what they think.

W-What kind of story site is this? And, what do you write about?

H-Well, honey, it's an erotic story site and I send in erotic stories.

W-By erotic do you mean porno?

H-Mine aren't just sex, I write stories about people and their sex lives.

W- You write stories about our sex life? What's the matter with you, are you some kind of nut telling people about our sex life?

H- Not our sex life but the sex life of other people.

W-What do you know about other peoples sex lives?

H-Nothing I just use the names of people we know, so I can remember the couples. Sometimes physical attributes. Most everything else I make up.

W-Why would you want to do this? Seems kind of sick to think of my husband writing porno.

H-Not porno, erotic stories. I started reading some of the stories on this web site. I couldn't find a lot of stories that think the way I do. So I said to myself, I'll try writing them myself.

W- You mean people who think weird.

H- No just the opposite, I'm the normal one and I wanted to read stories that sounded more like normal, real people.

W-God help us if you're the normal one. I've been married to you for thirty five years and you are anything but normal.

H-Anyway, the first couple of stories I wrote got rejected.

W-You wrote stories that even a porno site rejected. Boy you must be good.

H-No, they said my spelling and sentence structure didn't meet there standards.

W-What kind of standard does a person need to read to masturbate too?

H-No, they were right. They have a listing of editors to help you make corrections on your stories. So, I found a couple willing to help me. 

W-Do you have to pay them?

H-No, they just help new challenged authors for free, that's all.

W-With you they got a real challenge.

H- Go on your computer and read one of my stories and then we can discuss it. (fifteen minutes later she's back) Well what do you think?

W-You wrote about me.

H-No I didn't, I just used your size and measurement to fit a description of the wife in the story.

W- She even had my size boobs and the same color hair.

H- She also took her pussy and rubbed it all over a mans face till she climaxed. Whose face did you sit on?

W-Yours, does that count.(she smiled)

H-Was I the only one whose face you rubbed your pussy on?

W-I'm not telling. What are our kids going to think if they ever read that story? They're going to think I was a slut.

H-The story wasn't about you and our kids are in their thirties. I think they might understand fiction better then their mother.

W-What can I say to them if they ask what's dad doing? I can't tell them he's busy writing porno stories for people to read.

H-I'm old enough to do what I want. I really enjoy writing these stories. It's kind of a turn on.

W-I'll go read another one of your stories. (She returns 20 minutes later). Who's the black girl you had sex with?

H- What are you talking about? That wasn't me, that was fiction.

W-Fiction my ass, I remember your jobs and traveling. That was a true story.

H-No is wasn't but that shows how good my stories are. Even my wife believed it.

W-Yeah right, you're not off the hook yet. I better go read a few more stories.

H-Well, what do you think? 

W- You sure know a lot about our friends and neighbors. I was able to pick a lot of them out in your stories. 

H- I made most of them up. I do use a lot of real facts and real people.

W- Yeah right. How come you have so many stories about cheating wives and very few about cheating husbands?

H- I guess I know more about women who cheat then I do husbands. Wait a minute that didn't come out right. I know more about what a husband would do if he caught his wife cheating.

W- Good thing you changed your answer on that one. There could have been hell to pay. I notice you don't write any poems.

H- I'm not good at poems. I don't know if they should rhyme or not.

W-Try and write one.

H-Okay, here its goes. 'Old mother Hubbard went to her cupboard to get her poor dog a bone. When she bent over, rover drove her, cause he had a bone of his own.' How was that?

W-Not very good. Just one of your old jokes. Try again.

H- Okay! 'Jack and Jill, went up the hill, on the back of an elephant. Jill got off and helps Jack off the elephant'.

W-Nope, another of your old jokes. Better stick to the stories.

H-I wish we could submit jokes. I know a lot of jokes. Remember the little Johnny jokes we used to get? I got some little Tony jokes today. Do you want to hear them.

W-Sure why not, they have to be better then your poems.

H- Okay, here it goes.

------------------------------- 

LITTLE TONY ON REASONING

A teacher asks her class, "If there are 5 birds sitting on a fence and you shoot one of them, how many will be left?" She calls on little TONY.

He replies, "None, they will all fly away with the first gunshot."

The teacher replies, "The correct answer is 4, but I like your thinking."

Then little TONY says, "I have a question for YOU. There are 3 women sitting on a bench having ice cream: One is delicately licking the sides of the triple scoop of ice cream. The second is gobbling down the top and sucking the cone. The third is biting off the top of the ice cream. Which one is married?"

The teacher, blushing a great deal, replied, "Well, I suppose the one that's gobbled down the top and sucked the cone."

To which Little TONY replied, "The correct answer is 'the one with the wedding ring on', but I like your thinking."

LITTLE TONY ON MATH

Little TONY returns from school and says he got an 'F' in arithmetic.

"Why?" asks the father?

"The teacher asked 'How much is 2x3', I said '6'", replies TONY.

"But that's right!" says his dad.

"Yeah, but then she asked me 'How much is 3x2?'" "What's the fucking difference?" asks the father.

"That's what I said!" replied Tony

LITTLE TONY ON ENGLISH

Little TONY goes to school, and the teacher says, "Today we are going to learn multi-syllable words, class. Does anybody have an example of a multi-syllable word?"

TONY says "Mas-tur-bate."

Miss Rogers smiles and says, "Wow, little TONY, that's a mouthful."

Little TONY says, "No, Miss Rogers, you're thinking of a blowjob."

LITTLE TONY ON GRAMMAR

Little TONY was sitting in class one day. All of a sudden, he needed to go to the bathroom. He yelled out, "Miss Jones, I need to take a piss!!"

The teacher replied, "Now, TONY, that is NOT the proper word to use in this situation. The correct word you want to use is 'urinate'. Please use the word 'ur-i-nate' in a sentence correctly, and I will allow you to go."

Little TONY, thinks for a bit, and then says, "You're an eight, but if you had bigger tits, you'd be a TEN!"

LITTLE TONY ON GRAMMAR

One day, during lessons on proper grammar, the teacher asked for a show of hands from those who could use the word "beautiful" in the same sentence twice.

First, she called on little Suzie, who responded with, "My father bought my mother a beautiful dress and she looked beautiful in it."

"Very good, Suzie," replied the teacher. She then called on little Michael.

"My mommy planned a beautiful banquet and it turned out beautifully." She said, "Excellent, Michael!" Then the teacher reluctantly called on little TONY.

"Last night at the dinner table, my sister told my father that she was pregnant, and he said 'Beautiful, just fucking beautiful!'"

LITTLE TONY ON GETTING OLDER

Little TONY was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after another. After the 6th one a man on the bench across from him said, Son, you know eating all that candy isn't good for you. It will give you acne, rot your teeth, and make you fat"

Little TONY replied, "My grandfather lived to be 107 years old."

The man asked, "Did your grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a time?"

Little TONY answered, "No, he minded his own fucking business."

--------------------- 

W-Those were cute, a lot better than your poems.

H-Well I told you I wasn't good with poems. But no, you said to try. Then you don't like my efforts.

W-Talk about not liking, there are a lot of readers who don't like you or your stories. What do they have against you?

H-I don't know. I always tell them what my stories are about and if they don't like them to hit their back button. I guess they don't like to be told what to do. So they grunt their way through my story so they can leave me a nasty remark.

W-You have a lot of people who seem to really like your stories too. I like reading their remarks better. It's like they know you. You really are a pretty nice guy.

H-You just want in my pants.

W-Yeah! Like I can't have that thing whenever I want. I noticed you didn't tell the truth in one of your stories.

H-What did I say that was a lie?

W- You said that you were fucking that girl and that you had a long cock. So the girl said, "Give me twelve inches till I bleed." Your cock is only six inches long.

H-I didn't lie. I gave her my six inches twice and then punched her in the nose. (That was a joke readers) My wife just went along with it.

W-Do you think people will like this talk between us?

H-Some will, they like my stories. Others will say they wasted their time reading this.

W-Why? Don't people like reading the truth?

H-There's no sex in this story. This is an erotic web site.

W- Then put some sex in this story so people won't hate you.

H-What should I write?

W-You're the porno writer, think of something.

H-My wife went to put on her night clothes while I was writing. When she came back she had on a pair of red baby doll pajamas. She looked sexy as hell when she came back into my office. As she came close to me I turned in my chair and put one hand on her ass and pulled her close. Then I slid my other hand down the front of her pj's. Sliding my hand over her soft brown bush, down onto her mound as I gripped tightly. Feeling the moistness of her pussy I slid two fingers into her opening, slowly finger fucking her. She started to ride my fingers making sounds and having small spasms.

W-Damn! That's some hot writing.

H-Be quite you'll knock my readers out of the mood. I continued to pump my fingers in and out of her pussy. Then I pulled my fingers out of her pussy and pulled her near transparent panties off her body. Then I got up and sat her in my chair, spreading her legs and getting on my knees in front of her. I buried my face against her hot wet pussy. God, she tasted great. I kept pushing my tongue into her till she climaxed.

W-Wow! That was some writing.

H-Can I say you will take my large cock and start sucking on it?

W-I don't hardly think so. Our family or someone we know might read this.

H-Can I say, you parted the cheeks of your ass while I plunged my cock deep in your anus?

W-I don't like it jammed up my ass, you know that. It hurts.

H-Well what can I tell them?

W-Tell them the truth.

H-Which is?

W-Well, you can tell them that as soon as you get done writing this story that I'm going to take you to our bedroom and fuck the hell out of you. You got me so damn hot with your writing that I really want to do it.

H-For Real?

W-For real!

H-I'm done. . . . 'The End.'

*

Comments welcome.

DG Hear 



The Writer



This story is copyrighted 2006 by Kaereni, may not be excerpted, reprinted, reproduced, or reposted in any form without the express written consent of the author. Visitors to this web site may read or temporarily download pages but are not permitted to modify or re-distribute them.

*

Author's Note: I normally don't dedicate stories anymore, but this one is special. It goes to an unknown fan I met and had a cup of coffee with after a book signing. I would like to publicly say to her, "Thank you for understanding." ~Kaereni

* * * * *

I first saw her at a book signing. She was thinner then I had imagined and had her red hair pulled back in a ponytail. Though she was the person from the photographs in the back of the book, she looked lost and almost childlike amid the stacks of her books at the signing table. As I moved forward in the line I could hear her pen scratching on the pages and murmured replies to people fawning over her.

And then it was my turn. Clutching her two books I handed them over and gushed how much I loved her work. My words of phrase died mid sentence when I saw her eyes behind the glasses. There was a weariness there that transcended tired and went all the way too exhausted. I said the only thing that came to me, "I'm sorry."

She stopped signing and looked at me. At first I could see she was confused but then she signed heavily and glancing at her watch said, "It's ok, only forty-five more minutes." She handed me the books back and the next person moved in pushing me off to the side before I could reply.

As I walked away I opened the books to run my hands over her signature. In the second one she had added the inscription, Thanks for caring, above her name. I sat outside the bookstore and waited. The first time she looked up and out there was a shock of recognition followed by a nod. Ever so often she would glance out and see me sitting there watching her. Soon her look changed to a smile that would brighten a cloudy day.

For the remaining time she would sign and glance up between people see me, nod and smile. It was closer to an hour and fifteen minutes before she finished the last person. I watched as she shook hands with the manager before coming out. Walking out she sat down next to me and sighed. Without looking at me she asked, "Care for a cup of coffee or something?"

I was flabbergasted, to be offered a chance to talk with one of my favorite authors was something more then I could ever ask for. "Would I? Sure" I said the words tumbling out in a rush.

She looked at me and smiled, "Like a breath of fresh air she came into my life." Standing, "Let see if the coffee is as bad here as I expect it to be."

We walked down to the food court side by side, me clutching my precious cargo, and her shaking out her hand from writers' cramp. We got fast food coffee and after a taste I pushed mine off to the side. She looked at it and then at her own cup. "Yes every bit as vile as I imagined it would be," she said after sipping it. She looked at me and asked, "Why did you wait around?"

I had prepared for this question while waiting but as I opened my mouth to answer, the prepared speech fled leaving me high and dry. Looking at her I ended up saying simply, "You looked like you needed someone to talk to."

She let out a small snort of amusement, "Over a bad cup of coffee, in the middle of a food court in..." She looked around confused for a moment and then looked at me, "Where am I anyways?" She shook her head as if to ward off the cobwebs, "No matter, they all look the same inside." She sipped her coffee and grimaced at it, "Let me guess, you have a book, a story idea that would be great for me." When I didn't reply she looked at me, "No? You want to break into the biz and want my help."

"No" I said looking at her. I looked down and added, "I just wanted to know why you're so sad and if I could help somehow." She didn't reply for so long I finally had to look up to see her face.

She looked at me a long time and once I made eye contact with her she said, "Your serious aren't you." When I nodded she continued, "I could spin you a tale of lost loves and passion, but somehow I think you would know better."

As she talked I could feel the age and weariness on her shoulders. Though she was only a year or two older than I, she talked as if she had walked the earth for ages and had seen and experienced it all. For her, that day, I became a confessor instead of a fan. I saw the woman behind the words; the longer she talked the more I felt a kind of kinship with her. 

"You would think book signing would be exciting for an author. And you would be right. It is exciting the first day or two." She sighed and looked at her hand, "What you don't see or understand is that I end up sitting behind tables all day, hearing the same words over and over again. Oh I love this or that... When's your next book coming out?" I guess she saw confusion in my eyes, "If one person says it's great you feel good, if one hundred say so the feeling wears thin, if a thousand say the same thing over and over, you just want it to end."

I was floored I had never thought about it from her side. Imagine going from city to city, sitting in malls signing books. I had always thought of it as a dream job. But even the best job gets old after awhile. And yet, you still have to keep signing a smile of your face.

She looked at me, her haunted eyes brimming with tears, "The worse part is what you hold tightly against your breast, isn't what I wrote." She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin, "What people love, what they sing praises for, is an abomination of my baby. It's not even mine anymore." She sighed heavily and sipped her cooling coffee. "God this really is vile," she said as she pushed her cup away.

I looked at her not understanding, "You didn't write these?"

"When you write and sell to a publisher they assign you an editor." Her voice took on the tone of a school teacher lecturing, "The editor's job is to make your baby fit the needs and wants of the publisher. He does not work for you nor have your best interests in mind. What starts out as a simple love story turns into a tangled web of intrigue. Oh sure you can refuse to change anything in which case the publisher will not publish you and you have to pay back what they paid you in the first place. Or you go along and make the changes the editor wants and watch your child, your creation die in the process."

Her eyes bored holes in mine, "Then you see your book in the stores. You know you made it, you're an author. When it starts selling and you get the royalty checks you really feel good. You can buy that new car, or dishwasher you have been wanting. Even so, there is a little voice in the back of your mind reminding you that this is not what you created; it is not your vision."

I could not help myself, "Why write another then if it was so hateful?"

She smiled sadly, "The money was too good."

I nodded understanding, "I understand."

The force which her hand hit the table sent the cups dancing, "No, no you don't. Writing is supposed to be fun. It turned into work, a job, just like any other." She took a couple of deep breaths and sighed, "I put my heart and soul into each word and then the bastards rip and shred it to make my baby fit their cubbyholes. This last time was even worse then the first."

She looked down and said in a whisper, "I can't take it anymore. I used to love sitting in front of the typewriter watching the words spin out from my fingers." She looked at me, the tears rolling down her cheeks, "Now, I look at the typewriter, think about writing again and shudder."

"Then you need to quit," I said my hand reaching out to grasp hers.

"Yes." Without another word, she squeezed my hand, and stood. As she walked away she stopped, turned back towards me, "Thanks for listening," and gave me one of her winning smiles. 

She gave up publishing her work after that day, and went back to being mortal. She eventually started to write again, but this time she wrote for her own pleasure.



The Writer



The night was a stormy one, as dark as the bottom of a deep well. The only break in the black sky outside my window was the flashes of lightning that lit up the entire area. The wind was a steady drone and the crash of the thunder sounds like explosions just outside......

"Damn, that really sucks." As I stand up from the computer and walk around the room. "Why the hell do I have such an impossible time describing something right in front of my eyes?" Looking back through the window I can see the storm that I can't describe. A black velvet sky made even more frightening by the occasional flashes of bright light from the lightning. The flashes only make the trees and surrounding land seem barren and dead. Giving the entire countryside the look of a neglected cemetery. 

Pacing around the study I can't seem to capture the magic that filled me with my other writing. I couldn't seem to find the old inspiration. I refuse to believe it was her, how could it be. Amy was never very supportive of my writing, neither stories nor music. How could she be the thing that sparks me. She was the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes upon. I was happy for the first time in my adult life. The sex was incredible and she was always ready to play. Anything I wanted she seemed to know, and would do, without me even saying a word. Yet, the rest of the time we were together was difficult at best. I wasn't really what she wanted, I found this out the hard way. It seems that she spent as much time pleasing my friends and neighbors as me. Then one day she was just gone. I haven't written anything worth a shit since. 

Finally after spending another night beating my head against the wall, I decided it was time for some sleep. Going upstairs to my bedroom, I can't help but admire this great old Victorian house. I love all the wood and stained glass. The wood for the interior was all from the forest around the house, the stained glass was all handmade. It had always been a great place to write and think. Now.....

One last look out the window into the night and I am taken by surprise. The moon peered at me from between the moving clouds. it was the only spot in the sky that wasn't black and barren. Right off the lower point of the crescent moon was one of the brightest stars that I had ever seen. I was given a necklace that looked just like this from a girl in school that was my first love. She was kind of a flower-child type and had a thought for everything that she did. She told me that this was what she saw when she looked at me. I never really understood, but I had never stopped wearing it since she gave it to me. She had lost her life when a drunk driver crossed the centerline and hit her little car. I loved her so much and I miss her every day. I have never told anyone about her, especially Amy, the one that just left. She would have considered her competition. Dead or alive. 

Her name was Renee' but she liked to be called Sunshine, and that's what she was, the sunshine that brightened any day. I decided this was some kind of omen, and never being one to tempt fate I decided to play that little childish game...

"Starlight, star bright... first star I see tonight.... I wish I may, I wish I might...... have this wish I wish tonight.....," I finished the wish off with, "I wish I could find my inspiration again, I am lost without it...... I love you and miss you, Sunshine." When I lay down I felt very peaceful, despite the storm and my lousy life. I slipped off to sleep very quickly.

As much as I hated it, today was errand day. Time to shop and pay the bills. I went into town and took care of the payments and then went to the grocery. As I was shopping, someone kept getting my attention but they always seemed to be just turning the corner when I looked. When I got to the next aisle they were already gone. This feeling followed me all day. Everywhere I went I felt like I was being watched. Rather unnerving. The grocery, post office, gas station, drug store, bank, the feeling never left me. On my way out of the bank, of course not paying allot of attention. I run smack into someone on the sidewalk. Knocking her to the ground, packages everywhere. I had knocked down a beautiful young woman. All I can do is stare at her until she says, 'Don't just stand there asshole.' Like a slap in the face, I jump at her words.

"I am so sorry, I didn't see you.... I wasn't watching...... are you all right?"

"I think I'll be ok, only bruised my pride." She gets up as I start to pick up her packages, "Are you always a million miles away?"

"No and I really am sorry. I usually don't knock down people the first time I see them." 

"I see, you only knock down your friends?"

I pick-up the last of her packages. I really want to laugh at what she said, but all I could do was look at her and wish I could just disappear. She looked so nice, I wanted to say something really witty. "I..... ummmm... I'm... ah.... Jesse....... uhhh."

"Hello Jesse Uhhh" she offers her hand with a little tease of a smile. "My name is Amanda. It is very nice to meet you, all things considered. Just watch where you are going so no one gets hurt...ok?"

"Sure... I promise."

As she turns and walks away I want to yell out, "please come back," but the words just stick in my throat. I suddenly feel tingly all over, what the hell is going on. Just before she turns around the corner she looks back my way and says, "By the way, my friends all call me Sunshine." Then she blows me a kiss. I stand there again with my mouth open. When I get enough of my wits back I run to the corner. She's nowhere in site.

I spend the rest of the day looking all over this damn town without any luck. As night falls and another storm begins to brew, I find myself back at the old house wishing I had said something, anything to make her stay. I also haven't been this excited about anything since Amy was here, maybe even before, when I was still just a kid. Throwing together something quick to eat, and afterwards giving up and just prepare to go to bed. Lately that pretty much has been my routine. I really don't even feel like even sitting down at my computer to write, all I do is sit and stare at the screen anyway. 

When I start up the stairs toward my room I hear a soft knock at the door. Just barely, since the storm is now going full bore outside. When I open the door, there is a small figure standing in the dark on my porch. As they step into the light a silly little smile creeps across my lips..... 

It's her, from today at the bank, my knock down victim. "Please, step inside, get out of the storm." 

As she does and turns around to face me, she also recognizes me as her assailant from earlier. "Well, what do ya know, thank you for the shelter. I slid off the road down by your driveway entrance and got stuck in the mud." 

It was only then that I noticed she was soaked and covered in mud. "Hang on, I'll be right back." I went into the closet at the top of the stairs and got a couple of towels and a thick silky comforter. When I got back to the door I handed her the towels and said, "Here, please use these to dry off a bit." 

After she had dried up and wrapped the other towel around her hair, I stepped up and wrapped the comforter around her. "I know this may sound like some old movie, but you really do need to get out of those wet clothes. At the top of the stairs there is a linen closet, grab a towel and go into the bathroom. It's the first door on the left of the closet. There is an robe on the back of the door. If you want, bring down your clothes and I'll put them in the washer for you. I'll call a wrecker to get you out of that ditch too. And don't worry, you're safe here.. nothing to be concerned about."

"Thank you, I don't want to be any trouble."

"No trouble at all, after all I do owe you some nice treatment, considering this afternoon's attack." At this she smiles, and I see why she is called Sunshine, the room lights up all around her. Then she turns and hurries up the stairs. 

Picking up the phone I get nothing, no dial tone, nothing. These storms always knock out the phone lines.... but for the first time I was grateful. I walked up stairs to tell her about the phone and noticed that she had left the bathroom door open. Not wanting to seem like some kind of peeping pervert I start back down stairs, when she calls from the bathroom.

"Jesse, do you mind if I jump in the shower and clean up a bit?"

I hurried down farther so she wouldn't know I had come upstairs and hollered back. "Of course, go ahead..... do you have enough towels?" She had remembered my name, I would have hoped for an invitation to join her... but she remembered my name. 

"Well, I could probably use another," was the answer. Then I heard the water start and stood there listening for a few minutes, hearing the shower door open and close I knew that she was inside the stall. I had grabbed a towel and started toward the bathroom. Slowly looking around the corner into the room, to see if she was inside the shower. I could see her outline in the stall door. She was just starting to lather up as I stepped into the doorway. Watching her hands slide slowly up and down her body. She paid extra long attention to her breasts. Then it dawned on me that I was doing just what I had told her not to be worried about. I suddenly felt like a real letch. I set the towel down on the hamper inside the door and quickly made my way back downstairs to the den. While I waited for her to finish her shower, I decided to start a fire in the fireplace. When I had it going pretty good I sat back against the couch. Looking back toward the door to the den I see an amazing sight. Sunshine is standing there, framed by the doorway, and the fire is making her glow. She has on one of Amy's silk robes, white, very short cut. She was truly beautiful.

"Is the robe ok? I found it in the closet, inside the bedroom, next to the bath. I was never much for terrycloth, she smiles..... I have my clothes like you said." Taking her hands from behind her, she holds out the wet muddy clothes she had been wearing.

"UUUhh, yeah, that's fine..... let me get those in the washer for you." I took the clothes and headed to the laundry room. After everything was started I returned to the den. She is sitting on the floor in front of the fire, two glasses of wine sitting next to her. I couldn't believe what was happening. I don't even get lucky in my dreams anymore.

"I hope you don't mind, I found the bottle in the wine cabinet, the glasses down below."

"Mind?.... you beat me to it.... sorry, the phone is out, so no tow truck yet .... probably be tomorrow now..... you are welcome to stay here." 

"I would like that, we can get to know each other better." Smiling she hands me a glass. We sit for what seems like hours talking and peeling back each others layers. Her laugh, her smile and the touch of her hand makes me feel happy inside. I haven't felt this way in so long, I am starting to feel alive again. She is sitting in front of the fire and the glow makes her look so inviting. Laying back on my elbows I think of so many things I would love to do, but I am afraid to stop the moment, to chase her away. She moves over closer to me and kisses me. As her lips touch mine I feel a spark, like a small lightning bolt that runs through me. Then she lays her head down on my chest. 

"I have looked for you for years," I find myself saying, not knowing where it came from.

"I know, that's why I am here. I felt your need."

Not fully understanding what she meant I smile anyway and pull her tight to me. She felt so right lying on top of me, I wanted to hold her forever. She kissed me softly and I tasted her lips. They were warm and soft. She pulled from my arms and looking deep into my eyes, she opened the robe she was wearing and let me see her beautiful breasts. I reached up and covered them with my hands. Rubbing her nipples between my finger and thumb. She starts to moan as I raise my head and take her erect nipples into my mouth, first one then the other. Continuing to massage and suck on her she starts to unbutton my shirt. Once open, she licks and sucks on my nipples as well. We take turns at each others chests, taking in the pleasure of the other. Her hands go to my belt and she works it loose as she is kissing down my belly. My head is swimming. then she unzips my jeans and frees my cock from its confinement. Wrapping her tiny hands around me she looks back into my eyes and tells me, "I have been looking forward to this all day." Then she lowers her head and rubs my cock along her lips, licking it with her hot tongue.

I can't stand much more of this when she slides her open mouth down my cock and takes me into her throat. I had not been that deep in someone's mouth since school, I was in heaven. She starts to bob and twist her head, sucking on me as she reaches the tip. I grab the sides of her head as I feel my orgasm about to explode. Just before I cum, she wraps her fingers around the base of my cock and squeezes hard. Holding me until the pleasure subsides. Only a small drop on cum oozes out, which she rubs from the tip with her finger and slowly runs her finger along her tongue. To my delight I had felt the orgasm inside but I was still as hard as ever and ready to go. She takes my pants off over my feet and tosses them aside. Taking off the robe she lays back and opens her pussy for me to see. She is very wet as her fingers find her clit.

"I want you to lick all over my pussy....please make me cum with your tongue." She has her fingers on her clit and deep in her pussy. I have never been one to have to be asked for help twice, but I wanted to play a little game of my own.

"You want me to eat you?..... play with your pussy for me... give me something hot to eat. I want to watch you make your pussy beg for me. This hit a chord deep inside her and her eyes got big and she smiled for me. She continues to rub and starts to pinch her clit as I lay down eye level with her hungry wet pussy.

"Talk to me...make it dirty...show me how nasty your little mind is. Put your fingers inside, let me see..." As I tell her, she goes wild. Her fingers get buried deep inside her pussy and the other hand is pinching and pulling at her clit.

"Damn... I am on fire... I want you to fuck me hard..... fuck my pussy now..... Lick me and help me cum." She is thrashing and dancing on her fingers. "oh GODDDDD, I'm close.... I am going to cum."

"Stop..... move your hands away..... don't cum yet." This takes her by surprise, but she looks into my eyes and does as I ask. I am still right at her pussy and watching as she can't even hold still anymore. I reach up and softly rub and play with her cunt lips. Exposing her clit, I lick across it and she jumps. sucking her into my lips I flick my tongue along the bud of flesh. Then I nibble on her just a little.

"OOhhhhh shit.. please... faster..... suck on me I am so close to cumming." She is pushing her pussy into my face and grabbing at my head. 

"Make me cum... please." 

I pull my head away and sit up. "Don't touch anything while I'm gone. I mean it, or I won't help you. Also keep your eyes closed until I tell you." I stand and quickly run into the kitchen, open the freezer and grab the bowl of ice. Then dash back in by the fireplace. I get back into the same place as before. This time with the ice close. "Keep em closed," she is still writhing on the floor as I take one of the ice cubes and put it into my mouth. I lick along her pussy and then suck her clit back into my mouth. This time instead of my tongue, I rub her clit with the ice cube in my mouth. She jumps and grabs my head again.

"Jesus CHRIST... that was good.. what the hell was it."

Pulling her tight onto my face I let the ice cube slide into her pussy. When it gets inside, she explodes. "OOOOHHHH GOOOODDDDDD I'M CUMMING..... PPPLLLLEEAAAAASEEEE don't stop." Holding the ice inside I start to suck on her clit and then take another cube and rub it along her ass hole and back to her pussy. As if by magic it slides inside without any trouble. When the cube melts in her pussy I grab another and rub it along her clit and back inside her hot, very wet cunt. She is again all over the place and rolling her head back and forth and screaming. I return to lick up the water that is now flowing from her hot slit. I taste the hot cum mixed in the melted ice. She is cumming and rubbing her pussy all over my face. I slide my tongue in deep as my finger probes inside her ass, she is cumming and practically screaming at the top of her lungs. "FUCK ME PLEASE.....I WANT YOU INSIDE ME.... NOW.. PLEASE.... OOOOHHHHHH PPPPPLLLLLLEEEEAASSSSEEEEEE.

I sit up and start to rub the head of my cock along the hot lips of her dripping cunt. I push in just a little and she pushes her pussy hard against me, driving me in deep. She is matching me stroke for stroke. The rhythm is getting faster and faster. She has tears in her eyes. I am in heaven. Just as I am about to cum, Amanda rolls me on to my back and starts to ride my cock. She has her feet planted and is bouncing on my cock like a pogo stick. 

"OHH God.... I'm close.... I can't stop..... I'MMMMMM cummmmmmiiinngggggg." As I start to pump the cum from me, Amanda slides down and licks and sucks me as I cum.....She slips me deep into her throat and sucks me dry. Then she lays down on top of me and holds me tight. I wrap my arms around her and feel our hearts pounding together. 

I awake to an empty room. Amanda is gone, she left a note on the wine bottle. Of course I run through the house looking for her before I find the note. 

Jesse, last night was truly wonderful.I want it to continue forever. I hadto leave for now, but I will be backtonight. This time I have a few tricksto show you, 

Luv Sunshine.

I haven't stopped smiling since I read the letter. Things are really starting to look up. I go into the study and sit in front of the blank screen. Looking deep inside I try again.......

The night looked like a black velvet curtain. Flashes of light fill the empty void of darkness, as the streaks of lightning cut a path across the sky. The sound of the rain is like the heartbeat of two lovers locked in passion. While lost in the theater of life going on outside my window, a knock breaks the silence of the moment. When I open the door I see a beautiful surprise ......like the first sunshine of the morning.



The Writer



I got up from the computer with a smile on my face. If I was right, within the next twenty-four hours my husband would read what I had just typed and if I knew him - and believe me I did - he would be smiling and rubbing his cock. Hell - he might even take it out and stroke it.

Revenge could sometimes be so sweet!

+++++++++++++++++++++

It all started the day I overheard two women gossiping at the beauty parlor. My favorite stylist had quit working at my regular salon and had gone to work at another place and I had followed her so I'd only been coming to the place for three weeks so I didn't know them and they had no idea who I was.

"Have you heard about Sophie?"

"Lord, what has that girl been up to now?"

"She's playing around with married men again."

"Oh my. You would think that she would have learned by now. What's this one, her third?"

"Fourth that I know of."

"There was George Wilson and Bill Hallman that I knew about. Who was the third?"

"Dave Misner."

"Oh no. I thought Dave and Cheri were the perfect couple. No way I would have ever thought Dave would run around on Cheri."

"The story I got is that Cheri was having an affair with her fitness instructor and Dave found out. He took up with Sophie to rub Cheri's nose in it."

"What happened? I saw Dave and Cheri at church last Sunday."

"I guess they decided that they were even and that they still loved each other and they are trying to put things back together. I think Sophie thought Dave was going to leave Cheri for her."

"That's what she thought about George Wilson and Bill Hillman. You would think by now that the girl would have a clue. Who is the latest one?"

"I don't know his name, but he is the tall, dark haired man who runs the feed store."

That got my attention! My husband Steve was tall, dark haired and he ran a feed store. In fact, it was the only feed store in town. Until hearing those two gossiping I had never, not in ten years of marriage, ever considered that my husband was anything other than one hundred percent faithful.

The two women changed the subject and moved on to something else and I sat there and tried to think of something - anything at all - that I could look at and say that it was a sign of cheating and I couldn't. Steve could not possibly have been cheating on me. Unfounded rumors and gossip is all that it was.

On the way home from the beauty parlor I tried to think of when Steve could cheat on me - if he was - and I was pretty sure that I could account for all of his time. There were only three times during the week that he wasn't with me and I knew where he was at those times. He bowled in a men's house league on Mondays and Thursdays and he had a lodge meeting on Wednesdays. I was not home alone on those nights. Monday I taught a class in pottery making at the community college and Thursday nights were my bridge club nights. Wednesday was my quiet time. No, I could account for all of Steve's time so he couldn't be running around on me.

But still?

The seed had been planted and for two weeks it grew until it finally reached a point where I had to know for sure. I called my friend Wanda and told her I was going to have to miss bridge on Thursday and then I called the school and told them I had an out of town emergency and wouldn't be in on Monday. 

Monday I was parked down the street from the feed store when it closed. I followed Steve to the bowling alley and just about the time I started feeling stupid for doubting him I noticed something odd. He didn't get out of his car. He just sat in it and I noticed him checking his watch every couple of minutes. Maybe ten minutes went by and then another car pulled in and parked next to him and a blond with big tits got out of that car and got in the car with Steve. They leaned together and kissed and then Steve pulled out of the bowling alley parking lot and I followed them to a Motel 6 and watched as Steve went into the office and got a room. 

I sat where I could watch the door of room 119 and it was three hours before Steve and his slut came out. They drove back to the bowling alley, made out for a few minutes and then the fuck pig got out of Steve's car and got in her own as Steve pulled out of the lot and headed home.

Steve was waiting for me when I got home. He was smiling and he said, "I'm in the mood sweetie. How about you?"

I wanted to pick up the table lamp and smack him with it, but instead I did something I had never done in ten years of marriage. I told him that I had a splitting head ache and didn't feel like it. He was shocked! I almost laughed, but that would not have fit the mood I was trying to project.

"In fact honey, I feel so bad that I'm going to sleep in the spare bedroom tonight. I may even call in sick to work if I don't feel better in the morning."

That really got his attention. In nine years I had never missed a scheduled day of work so I must really be sick. And it was true - I was sick - sick of looking at his sorry ass so I went off to bed. I avoided Steve on Tuesday morning and was in bed faking being sick when he got home from work. Wednesday I was parked where I had been parked on Monday and when Steve got off work he went straight to the Motel 6 and got a room. He parked in front of room 107 and left the door open when he went inside. Ten minutes later the bimbo showed up, looked in the open door, saw Steve and went inside and closed the door.

I sat there staring at that door and wondered what Steve saw in the cunt. I was better looking than she was. The only thing she had me beat on was breast size. I was a 34B cup and she was at least a 38D. Steve had never indicated to me that he was a breast man. The one time I did mention getting a boob job he came unglued and told me that mine were perfect and not to touch them. What else did the cunt have going for her besides tits? I treated Steve like a fucking king for Christ's sake and he was out screwing around on me? I didn't wait to see what time Steve and his cunt would come out of the room. I just went home and was in bed pretending to be asleep when Steve got there.

I could have passed on Thursday, but I had already told the girls that I wouldn't be there and I guess I did have some morbid curiosity so I was again parked down the street when Steve closed the store. I followed him to an apartment complex on Wilcox and watched as he went up to an apartment and rang the bell. The door opened and the fucking big titted slut stepped aside and let Steve in. I wondered why Steve was wasting money on a motel room when the whore had an apartment. I also started wondering how long Steve had been fucking around on me. He had been going bowling for the last seven years and he had been a member of the lodge for nine. Had he been cheating on me that long?

I sat there in the apartment complex parking lot and tried to understand what was happening. Up until that day at the beauty parlor I thought I had a great marriage and a loving husband. What had I done wrong?

I know that it wasn't lack of sex. I had never, at least not until the last few days, said no when Steve wanted to make love. We averaged five times a week and I've been told that after ten years of marriage that level of frequency is almost unbelievable and I did everything for Steve - including oral and anal. It made no sense to me. I knew that I was better looking than Steve's slut. Hell, I had guys hitting on me all the time, but I had never been unfaithful to my husband. At least not until then. I started to give some serious thought to getting even by doing the same thing that Steve was doing.

As I pulled up in front of the house I saw flickering light through the front window and was confused for a second before I realized that Steve must have left the computer on again. Once inside I saw the screen saver scrolling across the screen and out of curiosity I hit "enter" to clear out the screen saver and show me what Steve was logged onto when he left. It was another one of his porn sites and what was on the screen was a story of some kind. I read some of it and found that it was a story about a cheating wife. I hit the "back" button and found another story about a cheating wife. I hit "back" again and then again and again. All stories about wives cheating on their husbands. Some because they liked bigger cocks; some because they just were not being taken care of at home; some because they had gotten drunk and were taken advantage of and found out that it was exciting and a turn on to cheat and some because they were being blackmailed for something or other. I pulled up "history" and found that Steve had four story sites that he visited regularly. Was that it? Was Steve cheating for the thrill and excitement of it? I shut the computer down and went to take a shower.

I was washing my hair when the idea came to me. I rolled it around in my mind and by the time I was toweling off I knew just how I was going to get back at Steve. The first thing I would have to do was get back into the loving wife mode. Get back to not saying no when Steve wanted to make love (no-better make that 'fuck'- there would be precious little love making in that house anymore). I would even go after him. He had to think that it was business as usual. There would be no confrontation over Miss Big Tits. Steve would never find out that I knew. That was important to me - that he not find out that I knew because my revenge was going to be ongoing. If our marriage lasted fifty years it would be fifty years of hanging horns on him and then letting him read about it. Every affair, every back seat quickie, every surreptitious blow job in the supply closet at work would be written up in story form and then posted to the sites that Steve accessed and he would read them and not know that HE was the cuckold in the story. And I knew just who the first one to cuckold my hubby would be.

Our next door neighbor Jason is a hunk and he has made no secret of the fact that he would fuck me in a New York minute if I would let him. Never in front of Steve of course and even with me he couches it in terms that will allow him to protest his innocence if I call him on it. I will admit that I do flirt with him at times, sometimes outrageously, but up until Miss Big Tits came on the scene Jason didn't have a chance in hell of ever getting a sniff of my pussy. But the big titted whore was on the scene and Jason was finally going to get lucky.

+++++++++++++

The first thing I did was rent a post office box. The second was to buy a lap top computer and the third was to sign up with an ISP using the post office box as the billing address. I bought the lap top to insure that Steve would never know I was writing stories. If I used our home computer there was always a chance he could stumble onto something. I wouldn't even let him know I had a lap top.

Using my new lap top I accessed the four sites that Steve spent his time on. It was a simple matter to set up an author's account on each of the four sites. I had to select a user name and a password and I was in business. I thought long and hard about what user name to select and finally went with "pissedoffwife." In the author's profile on each site I let every one know that I was a wife who had been cheated on and that I had set out to get even and that all the stories I posted would be true. Once I had all that in place I set out to get Jason's cock in me.

++++++++++++++

I was paid for teaching my class on Monday nights so that night was out, but I could take time off from my bridge club. They had a list of people who liked filling in so I wouldn't be putting them behind the eight ball. I worked a lot of extra hours at work and I built up those extra hours as comp time and I had quite a bit I could use when I wanted. And I had my "quiet time" Wednesday nights plus Steve played golf on weekends that he didn't work and he sometimes took off on weekend hunting and fishing trips. I would have plenty of time to "play."

I would make my move on Jason Saturday morning. Steve would be playing golf and the weather was supposed to be sunny and hot; perfect conditions for what I wanted to make happen.

I was awake when Steve got home from his meeting with his fuck pig. I was lying on the bed wearing a black lace nightie and my legs were spread wide as I worked on my pussy with a rubber cock that we sometimes used for sex play. When Steve came into the room I smiled at him and said:

"I'm feeling much better sugar bear and I'm glad you are home. I hope I won't be needing this anymore" and I tossed the rubber cock aside. "Come on baby; show Miss Kitty how much you missed her."

Steve smiled and stripped off his clothes while I watched him and mentally prepared myself for what was going to be the most distasteful part of the charade. We almost always started our love making sessions with oral sex and I was dreading having to suck Steve's cock while he still had the juices of his fuck pig on it, but it would have to be done if I were to convince him that things were normal.

Steve surprised me. He bypassed all foreplay and moved between my spread legs and I had to wonder if it was because he didn't feel right having me suck his cock so soon after soaking it in another woman's cunt or was he afraid I might taste her and then ask him what he had been up to.

The rubber cock had gotten me wet and I'd helped out some by using some KY lotion (I wanted Steve to get used to a "wet" me) so Steve slid right in. I clamped my legs on his waist, dug my nails into his ass and told him to fuck me.

"I need it baby; do me fast and hard. Make me cum lover; make me cum."

He did make me cum and then he came, pulled out, rolled over and in minutes he was asleep. I looked at him lying there and lightly snoring and sarcastically thought, "Poor tired baby. It must be exhausting having to fuck two different women in the space of four hours." And then of course I wondered how many times he had gotten it up for his slut-pig and then I thought of something else that hadn't yet occurred to me. Did he eat the bitch? On Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays I was going to have to fight hard not to barf when Steve kissed me.

Friday night Steve was horny and we fucked twice. I did suck his cock, but it didn't upset me because he had showered that morning so whatever remained of his whore was washed off. Before we went to sleep he reminded me that he would be playing golf in the morning and then covering the feed store from noon to closing. I smiled as I thought, "Okay asshole, you go play with your little white ball and if I work it right I'll have some balls to play with too."

++++++++++++

Steve was up and out the door at 6:45 Saturday morning and I lounged in bed for another two hours and then I got up, had coffee and dug out what I was going to wear. I put on a pair of "Daisy Dukes" (with no panties) and a tank top that I didn't bother to wear a bra under. Once dressed, if you could call it that, I went outside and started weeding the flower beds on the south side of the house (Jason was my neighbor to the south) knowing that sooner or later Jason would notice me.

Bending over pulling weeds put my ass cheeks on full display and it wasn't ten minutes before I heard Jason say:

"Does Steve know that you are out here teasing me?"

"Teasing you? How in the world do you figure that? All I'm doing is pulling weeds out of my flower beds."

"You might as well be naked from the waist down. Those shorts don't cover anything. At least they aren't covering the good parts."

"I always thought you were interested in my good parts."

"I am. I just wish that I could see more."

"How much more?"

"It would be nice if I could see all of it."

"Oh I'll just bet it would be. But it would be very irresponsible of me to let you see all of it."

"How so?"

"Can you not just imagine the state that it would leave you in? Would you want me to walk around all day carrying the guilt that causing you all that discomfort would give me?"

"You could avoid the guilt by taking care of the problem."

"I suppose that would work, but somehow I don't think that Steve would care for that."

"Fuck Steve!" 

"Fuck Steve? I thought it was me that you wanted."

"I do you sexy little bitch. It is all I can do to keep from jumping this fence."

I pulled my tank top off and dropped it on the ground. I stood there and caressed my breasts with my hands and said:

"Is this enough to make you want to jump the fence?"

He just stood there open mouthed and staring at me. I pushed the "Dukes" down and kicked them away. I gave him a good look at my clean shaven beaver.

"How about this? Fence jumping material? The front door is unlocked" I said as I turned and walked into the house.

The stairway to the upstairs is just inside the front door and I was sitting on the second step, legs spread wide, and fingering my pussy when the front door opened and Jason came in. "What took you so long" I asked as I watched Jason hurriedly strip. He walked toward me with his hard cock leading the way and I had to move up one step so my mouth would be on the same level as his erection. I opened my mouth and he walked his cock right into it. As my lips clamped around the first cock other than my husband's to see the inside of my mouth I smiled as I thought of Steve reading about it.

I sucked Jason's hard cock until I got him to cum. I swallowed all of it and then stood up. "I have until five this afternoon to play. Are you up to it?"

"I'm sure that you will be able to take care of the "up" part."

"Oh you can be sure of that honey. Come on; let's take this to the bedroom."

Once there Jason pushed me down on my back and said, "My turn" as he pushed my legs apart and went down on me. The man knew how to eat pussy. I let him munch on me until he had me close to the edge and I needed a hard cock so I pushed him away, moved over on top of him and guided his cock up into me as I pushed down on him. I moved up and down on his hard cock and moaned:

"Come on honey, fuck me. Make me your slut."

"I've always wanted my very own slut" he said as he worked his hard rod into me.

"Do it right honey and I'll be your slut whenever you want."

"Ah, incentive. Incentive is good."

I bounced and rocked on him until he finally moaned and rolled me over on my back and fucked me hard and fast. He got me off twice before he had his own climax and then he pulled out and settled down on the bed next to me. 

"Was I good enough? Did I do it right? Are you going to be my slut now?" he said as he faked panting like a dog expecting a reward.

"You did just fine honey. Consider me your fuck-toy from now on. Just one major problem."

"What's that?"

"You are soft and we still have hours before Steve will be home."

"I'm betting that my little fuck-toy can cure that soft condition. Come on sweet slut and put it in your mouth."

We sucked and fucked off and on for the rest of the afternoon and before Jason left I told him I would sneak over to his place for a quickie the next day and I did - twice! Once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

I was waiting on the stairs for Steve when he got home that night. I was exactly the same as I had been for Jason when he had walked through that door and I did exactly the same thing to Steve that I had done for Jason and then I led him up to the bedroom for his 'seconds'. They weren't sloppy seconds - I had cleaned myself out - since I didn't want to give Steve any idea that he wasn't the first one in me that day, but I did want to give him pussy that had been well used by someone else. As I lay there looking up at him as he thrust into me I was thinking, "That's it asshole, fuck this pussy. This pussy that isn't yours any more. It belongs to Jason now - Jason and what I hope will be a whole lot of others - and you just get to use it from time to time after someone else has used it."




The Writer



++++++++++++++++++++++++

I finished typing the story of my afternoon with Jason into the lap top, making only minor changes to disguise Jason, Steve and me. Things like changing Jason's name to Jonas, changing feed store to gas station and making Jason my north side neighbor instead of my south side one. And of course I changed Steve's name and mine. I added the disclaimer that the names had been changed to protect the guilty and then I sent the story off to the four sites. Hopefully, if my wish was granted, Steve would be sitting at the computer stroking his cock as he read the story and thought that "some guys had all the luck."

I got up and started the laundry and as I was separating the whites from the coloreds I was thinking of who else I could be a slut for. I was going to need lots of material for my husband to beat off to.



The Writer and the Freeks



I have decided to reveal all, regardless of the severe pressure being placed on me by agents hired (I strongly suspect) by Johnnie Canlick and the Freeks: the beautiful red-haired, green-eyed, lightly freckled Ginger Freek, 36, and her daughter Debby, 18, of similar appearance, if somewhat taller at 5'10". Two more cock-hardening, long limbed beauties would indeed be hard to find, to be fair. 

However, I had issues with the pair. Both had a tendency to speak first and think after, assuming the latter took place at all. They were definitely not on anybody's charity list. Apart from collecting big bucks from insurance policies after the death of her husband, Ginger had decided to continue her coffee catering business. She had identified a niche in the high-priced end of the market and did good trade in her outlet in the local mall, selling premium quality Caribbean coffee grown high on the slopes of the Blue Mountains in Jamaica. Her daughter Debby decided not to go to college, preferring instead to be assistant manager in the shop.

These ladies habitually jogged at a leisurely pace past my house in the mornings. On one occasion, Debby had come to my door and rung the bell. I thought, as I gazed at her longingly, that my jerk-off fantasies, which were very detailed and strong, had been so powerful that they had somehow compelled her to seek the source of these mysterious energetic forces. But, no, she only wanted help to get her Mom back to their house, as she had stepped on a stone and twisted her right ankle.

I drove them both home and tried to cover my prurient intentions by being extra solicitous and, falsely, caring. It was all of a piece to me. Mother or daughter; daughter or mother; or mother AND daughter. But I couldn't very well hit on Ginger at this pain-filled moment in her life, could I? That would have exposed me for what I really was: a deep thinker. Oh, yes! Always thinking with the small head about being deep in hole.

So, adapting my approach to fit the circumstances, I decided to hit on Debby for a date. Hell, the bitch turned me down flat in the most demeaning, lip-curling, pompous manner, while muttering something about "dirty old men always wanting to rob the cradle and spoil innocence." I could have shrugged that insult off, but then, realizing her power, she proceeded to sit in a chair opposite me and, crossing her legs, she let flash a brain frying glimpse of sheer blue panties, followed by a steady state view of miles of alabaster thigh. Now that was unforgivable. "Say no and go, don't tease and fail to please," I thought indignantly. 

I was her enemy thence forward. Suffice it to say that by one means or another, I acquired solid, and incontrovertible, proof confirming what I had always suspected: that they were extremely nasty, incestuous lovers of the worst sort, though, of course, hypocritically maintaining a church-going, book-club, apple pie Mom, and dutiful, chess-playing daughter façade to the public and, especially, to their espresso loving customers. 

I, however, managed to obtain (praise God!) damning vidcam evidence of them entwined in an incestuous, sweat-drenched, passion-ridden episode of such disgustingly unsanitary and nasty proportions, that a fly on the wall, in grave danger of losing its lunch, lurchingly flew away from the scene. That wraps my case. Anything that can make a nastiness professional such as a fly, (whether common, or horse) behave in such a manner merely by watching is of world-class nastiness and front-runner for the gold medal in the nasty Olympics.

I confronted them and let them know they were going to be stars. Their story would be the inspiration for my next erotic novel, and the purely imaginary creative insertion of an incestuous red-haired mother/daughter team would add a nice touch of realism to the plot. 

Thereafter, a series of most strange events took place. It seemed that all ailing cats and dogs in the County suddenly decided that my front lawn possessed some mysterious link to animal afterlife: they breathed their last there so often. I thought about calling the Guinness records people, but the problem was that I didn't keep any evidence. I could not store them away. I had to burn or otherwise dispose of their small corpses. 

But, at last, all was out in the open, completely implicating the Mesdames Freek. I received a note attached to a rock which I found on my lawn, next to the morning paper. Kindly observe the insulting means of delivery: Stone Age technology, not HM postal service. It was a simple aide memoire, full of accusations (mostly true, but that's another matter):

To : The Criminal Re : Proposed Expose Msg: Scum of the earth, no, the universe. Lay off decent people. Rise off your arsebone and go earn a respectable living doing something worthwhile, you hog. You spied on us by having your fellow villain, posing as a home security expert, set up a secret camera in the basement of our home. Did you enjoy choking your needle while watching, eh? Oh, please, Gene, pretty, pretty, please don't destroy us. From: Ginger and Debby

Well, I may be a Hogg (Gene Hogg at your service), but I am no hog. And I cannot bear to see ladies in distress. Though, on reflection, I doubt if such a respectable appellation should be applied to the Freeks. But in deference to their plea for privacy, I will go this far. I shall accompany their story with a caveat that any resemblance of characters in the story to anyone living or dead is purely coincidental. I don't know if that will satisfy them, though. I mean, how many mother/daughter look-alikes with red hair and green eyes are there? Sheet! 

As to whether one should refer to them as bona fide "ladies," the reader can decide after perusing the narration. And I did NOT appreciate that snide remark about needles! Maybe I should call them just "women." And how, baby!!! Jeez, the long legs, the red hair (hence the temper and the intemperate note), the greeeeen eyes, the bubblebutts, the bullet nipples. The indecently elongated penis-clit of Ginger. Fukkit! But I'm getting ahead of myself; let's proceed with some order and decorum here, difficult though this may be, given the subject matter. It is most often best to begin at the beginning.

 Johnnie Canlick Speaks?

Johnnie, a writer of minor accomplishments, was seeking to improve his ratings and, more importantly, his sales. As such, he was forced by circumstances to speak in public from time-to-time, a task which he hated with a passion as great as he felt when composing one of his erotic scenes of no redeeming social value. On the few occasions he had been cajoled into doing this unpleasant task, he had had to fortify himself to the gills before accepting his terrible fate and wending his unsteady way platform- ward. When I tell you that he had to smoke a bowl in the bong and knock back two neat drinks of Johnnie Walker Red to host a kids' birthday party, after days of pleading from his revered mother, you will understand his great aversion to anything even slightly resembling a lectern or a platform.

He was, therefore, much pissed-off after collecting his mail one morning and finding a letter from one Ginger Freek inviting him to address her ladies' book club the next Tuesday, and citing his dear mother as the person instigating the invitation. Ginger had already booked him and issued invitations on the strength of his mother's assurances that he would like nothing better than to perform this function as part of his civic outreach and as a "side issue," sell some books. His Mom, you see, was tired of being hit on for loans. Or, in reality, gifts, for they were never repaid.

For some strange unfathomable reason, Johnnie's mother seemed to have chosen the morning of the mail delivery to take a trip off the planet, perhaps to the international space station for all anyone knew. No 'phone call, no note, no e-mail, no personal visit, could elicit a response. "Strange, strange, passing strange," Johnnie thought. At first, he thought of reporting her as a missing person. Then the penny dropped, and he had a "wild surmise," as the saying goes. As a matter of fact, I am reminded of the often stated truism "No one knows better than Mom," or words to that effect.

And so it is that we have come to the Tuesday of doom, and Johnny, the mother-hater, is in bad shape. This is an opinion which is, however, not shared by the ladies. They were used to eccentrics, and so regarded Johnnie's staggering and reeling down the aisle on his way to the platform as a most creative way to make an entrance. 

Many were thinking, as if with one accord, "Geez, what will these creative writers come up with next?" Well, the consensus was that one definitely had to admit that the man was also a fine actor who could have made a living on the stage. Imagine doing an Irish reel, and then pretending to slip and end up in a lady's lap and pretending to snore. Great acting, don't you know! They almost got their money's worth already.

However, when the lady in question pricked him with her brooch pin, and he rose skyward shouting, "Murder! Murder! Stinking bitch," before resuming his way to the gallows, some of his loyal fans began to wonder if the Irish reel might not have owed some inspiration to another Johnnie. As a matter, I was informed by one of the ladies present (with whom I had a relationship of no redeeming social value) that the very strong fumes from Johnnie's breath seemed to have had some effect on the brooch lady. She began acting noticeably out of character, removing her stockings from her endless legs and exposing a crotch of sheer lacy white panties (causing several lesbo clits in the vicinity to poke out of hood) and waving them around to cheer the "events."

Johnnie eventually gained the platform and promptly fell asleep with his head on the flat surface of the lectern to the wild cheers of those who had not been in the vicinity of the lap incident. They thought the "reel entrance" and the pretence at sleeping were all theater and of a piece. 

When an official tried to awaken Johnnie, who could have passed for a corpse were it not for his snoring, he awoke and vocalized an amazingly fierce "HAI," instantly assuming a karate pose to counter this grave threat to his life. The official, frightened for her own life, issued a sudden, loud, ripping fart.

Jesus, the ladies, most of them, really LOVED this theatre. The bitch, ahem! the lady in question was always such an overly prim, annoying, pain in the arsehole, that some ladies were literally weeping with joy at her discomfiture. As she primly took small, mincing steps on her way off the platform, scrunched over to appear as small as possible, Johnny, for good measure, shouted an even louder "HAI" at her back and, in reaction to this unexpected and violent-sounding war cry, she boomed an even louder fart, followed by a machine gun series of smaller ones while dashing off the platform. Pandemonium reigned. The club leaders were already high-fiving each other to celebrate their wisdom in selecting such a dynamic speaker. 

The farter hastily scribbled her resignation and gave it to someone, who advised those ladies rolling on the floor to resume their seats and listen up. Shit! I, as historian, can tell you that from all reports there was so much cock-stiffening (or Sapphic clit-sliming, for that matter) lingerie on display, that the room quickly became a voyeur's stinky paradise. Sheer yellow, light pink, orange, black, white cotton, light green, lacy fuchsia, thong, string... sheet! I could go on, and on, but I just remembered that I have to visit the bathroom, urgently; dirty pair of socks left on the floor, don't you know!

Well, here I am again; took me about half-an-hour to pick up and wash those socks. As the official finished reading her resignation, cheers and even (I regret to say) profanities rent the air. Johnnie, suddenly awakening from another nap at the podium, decided that they were still cheering the fart episodes and so, going with the flow, grabbed the microphone and magnified a humongous fart, which set off a new round of screaming mirth and sailor-on-shore-leave-like modes of expression. By the time order was restored, Johnnie's time was up. 

Mrs. Ginger Freek (a widow) thanked him profusely for one of the best speeches ever delivered at the club, and remarked that his mother must be very proud of a son like him. His mother, beaming, decided to make it known to one and all than she had returned from her trip off the planet and shouted, "That's my boy, the hot writer. I told you he was a great speaker." She showed where Johnnie got his genes when the excitement caused her to blow out a disgustingly male-sounding fart. I was told that several ambulances had to be called to transport ladies to ER for treatment of all sorts of complaints -- from laughing sickness to hiccups. But I will not guarantee the accuracy of that report.

The strange thing, though, is that the secretary taking notes could not remember any specific thing to report. She did, at times, see his lips moving, and once seemed to hear something like "A whole roomful of stinkin', crazy, fucking bitches...," but she thought "Nah, he wouldn't say that, a big author like him. The crazy, fucking bitches are deafening me. Better go to the ENT tomorrow."

 Johnnie Goes Freek

Ginger Freek invited Johnnie home for supper and, hungry as a lion with a huge thorn in the right forepaw, he accepted readily. She really did not have any great hopes of snaring him as a lover; because she had such freaky tastes, after her husband died during a mountain climbing accident, she only really trusted her daughter with her secret fetishes.

However, when she passed the bathroom where Johnnie had gone to take a piss and saw him sniffing with frantic, manic intensity at the gusset of her bloodstained panties (it was period time), she began to reconsider. Ginger nervously remembered that she had also pooped in them, and it was as if the thought had been intercepted by Johnnie because he turned the panties inside out and began to lick the messy deposit off the back panel. The panties she was wearing got slimy and wet very quickly as she remembered the very naughty games she used to play with her husband before he died.

Ginger called up her daughter Debby on the cell phone, apprised her of the possibilities, and ended by telling her to get her bloody, stinking, hairy, red-haired hole home right away. Debby had been playing chess at a friend's home, you see. Meanwhile, Johnnie had tugged out his rising schlong and was stroking and choking it while trying to suck the dried blood from a pad he had found in a waste receptacle beside the hamper.

"What on earth are you doing? That's so, so, nasty and very unacceptable in this house. You need to go to some bloody whorehouse and suck a whore's bleeding cunt, you disgusting man." The startling voice rang out clearly in the acoustically perfect cavern of the bathroom. It was Debby, who had just come home, and she had her camera phone AND was taking pictures. "I'm going to tell Mom and show these to my friends," the alabaster-skinned, green-eyed beauty declared. 

As for Johnnie, the effects of the marijuana and the bottle of Scotch had lessened somewhat, and he began to plead fervently, if somewhat incoherently, with the girl not to ruin what was left of his career.

Debby did not answer. She ran off to show her Mom the pics. Both beauties headed for the bathroom where Johnnie lay dejectedly on the floor, a beaten man. He had enough presence of mind to know that he had fouled up royally that day. He knew the difference between farting and giving a speech, and so knew he had not addressed the gathering. And now this! If high school kids saw this, he was done for. He'd have to leave the County at least, if not the country itself. He slumped down further.

"Well, well, look at you, you nasty thing! You should be grateful that I am a considerate woman," Ginger intoned disdainfully. "But since you are such a freak, I've decided to help you on your way to hell. If you accept this, the pictures will not be exhibited outside this house." And so saying, she sidled up to Johnnie and jostled her wide, sexy, curvy, bottom against his nose and let out a squeaky, stinky fart which owed parenthood to her late night snack of prune juice and onion and cheese sandwiches. 

Johnnie, who had secretly longed to be used this way by women all his life, was so startled that he held his breath at first. He dimly remembered a saying that people in the arts are always seeking something aesthetic, but don't know what until they find it. Well, he was now finding that he had found it. 

Johnnie awoke from his reverie with a start and jammed his nose up to what he surmised was the actual arsehole zone while squeezing Ginger's belly almost painfully, in order to induce more farts. Ginger let loose a more robust fart than before, and this one went straight up the bugger's nostrils. He inhaled deeply, snarfing up the stink and marveling on the shapely arse jostling against his nose while he tugged and abused his Johnson.

Debby, seeing how matters were shaping up, had stripped naked, exposing her sexy, smelly, blood-drenched, red-haired pussy and her pale, white titties tipped with stiff, blood-engorged nipples. She barked, "Lie down on the floor, bugger, and seal your mouth to my arsehole." 

Johnnie quickly stripped naked and assumed the submissive floor position as the girl mounted his face and jostled her arsehole to cover his mouth. Lost in fantasy, he loudly sniffed the stinky odours coming from between her legs as they assumed their positions, his rod standing firm and straight. All now became clear: these beautiful bitches were nasty freaks. 

Ginger had a stained panty over her face, sniffing gusset and frigging clit in a daze. She stepped up and let a strong stream of yellow piss batter her daughter's face before the girl opened her mouth to catch the rest. She then turned around and, straining with a painful look on her scrunched-up face, jiggled her arse up and down before managing to release a putrid delivery of ass gas right into in her kid's gaping mouth. Turning back around, she continued to flout society's laws of the ideal parent-child relationship by rubbing her bloodstained, red-haired pussy on her offspring's innocent-looking face.

Far from resenting this disgraceful lapse in parenting ideals and reporting the matter to the relevant authorities, the beautiful teenager enthusiastically aided and abetted this shocking exhibition of incestuous lesbianism. While machine-gunning some wet-sounding stink farts down Johnnie's palate and down the bugger's throat, she stuck a wiggly finger up her mother's bloody hole, seeking to find the sweet G-zone amid the copious flow of menstrual blood and sticky red blobs, to send her darling Mom over the edge. 

"OOOOH! Oh, yes, baby. GAAWDD! Yes, scratch, scratch, scratchit, darling! So sweeeeet. Tickle it, darling! Ohh, Lord, fukkitt, fukkit, bloody bitch. You mother-fucking, disgraceful, pussy-sucking lezzie whore! Geeeeezzzus, Macaroni Christ! That's it honey, YEESSS! Now, lip it, sweetie."

Debby, ever the respectful child, removed her finger from the cunt hole and jammed her open mouth over the protruding clit-cock; it was sticking out nearly an inch from the hood, the product of much masturbation and treatments with a vacuum pump. Ginger often frotted her daughter's clit with it when they were rubbing tribade- wise. 

Debby resettled her self on Johnnie's mouth and let loose another smelly, watery fart in his gaping mouth. He loved being used thusly by this beautiful young girl in her prime and snarfed down the smelly wind emission with deep pleasure.

All three were now so hot that eggs could be fried on their skin. Ginger, in an incestuous, funky, daze, could only gape and work her mouth wordlessly as the fruit of her loins sucked and tongued, spit on, nursed on, and tongue-whipped the slimy clit-digit, alternating the sucking and tonguing very skillfully as she soaked up the female stink of her mother's leaking hole. Ginger began to tremble and whinny, shouting out her major purpose in life at that crucial juncture: "Wheeeeee! Wheeeeee! Nnnngggy! Nnnngggy! Ssssssssttttttt! Ssssssssttttttt! SUCCKKIT NOW, SUCKI, SUCCKI, SUCCKKIT, FUCK, Bay-bay-bayybeee, I'm there. Oh, jeesus, oh, criest, I'M KUMMMMINNNGGG! FUKKK, oh, SHIT."




The Writer and the Freeks



Ginger lost control of her bowels on her way down to the floor and collapsed in a mess of diarrhea, in which she lay contentedly, gasping out the after-thrills, and lightly playing with her clit-cock.

"Mom, what should I do? Johnnie is sucking away at my nasty arsehole like he wants to induce an accident. I don't know, Mom! That is so grross!"

"Make him a happy camper, dear. He's near paradise already just with your pale, wide, soft, bottom on his face, sniffing at your stinky parts. Some men are so besotted by a sexy, beautiful female with a kinky attitude that the only stink thing that could turn them off would be a dead body. Make him complete the trip to paradise darling, as I used to do for your dear father."

"Oh, so we are falling in love are we?" Ginger observed, as Debby turned to give Johnnie a tender, tongue-filled kiss.

"You, you want it baby?" she breathed.

"Oh, Gawd, yesss! Feed me honey!"

"It won't be honey, honey."

"I know, precious. Dowit, dowit," Johnnie gasped, excited beyond words. "Ggaaaaaa," he exclaimed as the kinky girl's fart bbrraaaaapted from her beautiful phattt bottom.

The girl was now frigging her clit in a frenzy as she prepared to abuse her first man this way. She straddled his chest and squatted lewdly, splaying the cheeks of her arse with both hands in a nasty maneuver that left no doubt as to her intentions. She grunted and strained, fruitlessly at first. Then, all of a sudden, the built up pressure forced out a huge explosion of watery, splattery spray, accompanied by machine gun farts, which went everywhere. 

Her parent, looking on, fondly remembered her late husband and his own feeding times, both of the red and of the brown, washed down by the yellow. Sometimes she used to visit his office just to wonder if this lion of a manager-in-charge, this competent wheeler-dealer, was really the same entity who had asked for, no, begged for, her shit the night before. She always left with slimy, wet, stinky underwear and an erect mini-penis pushing lewdly at the silk front panel of her panties. But sometimes she had to leave her panties with him so he could jack the wood during lunch time.

Meanwhile her baby was now grunting, red in the face with effort, as a brown log hung, three inches and growing, from her asshole. "Open up wide, Johnnie, honey," Debby instructed, "and chew on it so I can see you."

Johnnie caught the disgusting turd in his mouth and sniffed and chewed, chewed and swallowed, as if eating prime quality chocolate, while stroking his cock almost faster than the eye could follow. The bathroom stank of female stink and shit, and everyone was masturbating with fixed stares and rigid postures as if trying to see some invisible god of Eros in the air.

"I'm kumm- um- um, waaaah," Johnnie choked, and then coughed on a piece of shit stuck in his throat. As the worried pair of ladies approached to slap his back and perhaps prevent some medical crisis, Johnnie coughed and spat out the remnant shit in their faces, followed by some alcohol-flavoured puke and spit. 

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, somebody sukkit please," he pleaded.

Debby, her face dripping watery shit and puke remnants, bent over and covered the cockhead, applying deep suction. She only had to nod a few times before a great eruption of cockslime raced down her throat.

Johnnie's dong had only slightly wilted, and so he forced his newfound girlfriend to the floor and tried to find her cunt hole. Mother Ginger came to the rescue and guided the pole into place. Ginger bawled out shrilly as the cock ripped through her delicate hymen and lodged deep.

"Aiieeeeee! Aiieeee! Oh, God, Johnnie, ease up, it hurts. Oh, Gawwd." Johnnie rested awhile and lay atop the beautiful girl while she adjusted to the pain. Her breath reeked of ass gas and menstrual blood, and now she turned her head to the side and began to barf gutturally, releasing huge amounts of whitish puke tinged with red. Johnnie bent over and sucked down some of the disgusting puke slime coming from the maw of the beautiful girl, which was filled with putrid, sour, half-digested food, menstrual blood , and bile. He gently began to grind against her cunt 'til she started to responded. He now was stabbing the meat furiously, and his eyes bugged out as his brain strove to adjust to this de Sade-like, incredible, orgiastic setting.

Mother Ginger then straddled her darling's face and pulled Debby's knees to her chest, to open her daughter up for Johnnie's battering. She became so excited that she lost bowel control and a soft stream of runny shit leaked from her asshole and painted her baby's face. 

"Oh, God, Mom, you're drowning me in a shitload of diarrhea, you shitwhore," the girl complained.

"Watch your language, child. I will not have you swear like... oh, fuck, my guts are blowing out. Sorry, sweetheart. Watch out!" Ginger squawked as she unloaded a humongous mess of stinky, runny shit right on her darling's face, accompanied by a barrage of farts.

Johnnie, watching this awful, sick display of unbridled, fetishistic hedonism, coughed up more shit and phlegm, and spat it on his sweetheart's face as he increased his jackhammer activity, plumbing and widening Debby's now stretched pussy hole for all he was worth. 

"Oh, fuck. Oh, lord," he suddenly exclaimed. These two red haired, green-eyed bitches should be crowned Queens of the world, he thought. He would kill for them now. 

"Fuckkkk, fukkit, Mamma Ginger, I'm cumm---I'm cumming. OOH, Mamma, Mamma darling," Johnnie wailed as he emptied what sperm he had left into the unprotected, clasping, fertile, tight hole of Mamma's daughter, who, despite her exposure to freaky, incestuous, lesbian sex, was a virgin until only minutes ago. 

Mamma Ginger massaged and pinched his balls to help out. The three were bonded. Mamma Ginger had a boy toy to fill her bisexual cravings; Debby had a compatible, it seemed, future husband; and Johnnie... 

What about Johnnie? Shit, I wish I had something bad to report about Johnnie, but the true historian should endeavour to stick to the facts as closely as possible. Johnnie, I dare say, will create a storm of comment at his funeral. I expect to hear baffled comments such as, "What's going on here? This is the first corpse I've ever seen with a smile in the casket. Jesus, that's freaky." 

A grave voice nearby will respond, "Pardon me sir, but we, the undertakers, tried to get rid of it. We could make no progress, even with the most potent muscle relaxants available. So, instead of cutting off his face, we decided to let the smile remain. As to what caused it, your guess is as good as mine."



The Writer and the Raven



His hand gripping my throat too tight for comfort but not tight enough for death, he led me in to the locker room. As the tears began to stream down my face he grabbed at my breasts and licked up the side of my neck to my ear. He bit into my ear lobe as he ripped the front of my shirt away spilling buttons and blood in unison to the floor. I could feel reality slipping away as I realized I would soon become just like him, a mere wraith in the world with no soul or faith to hold onto. He slapped the side of my face hard to snap me back to the pain he would soon be inflicting.

He was a master at such abuse; many women had succumbed to his original smiles and compliments only to be led to this very same demise. I say demise in the meaning that this was the end but death would have been so much sweeter. The future that beheld them would be one of selling flesh and souls, draining blood and humanity from every man that was foolish to glance their way. Most of them had been women that would forever look eighteen, ever so useful in the trade of prostitution. However, I was nearing my 32 birthday, so my eternal look was not something of use to this little clan.

No, it was my talent of writing; this would beguile men into the web. They would become fodder for the vamps in order of rank until those that would be last to feed would be scurrying around biting at one another to survive. 

So here we have this inevitable descent into this world of lure and feed, it was just too easy for the seniors to pass up. When they seen how easy it was too get food with the use of the ladies of the night, it was a set way of life. The ease of acquired food coupled with the money that they made off the victims whether they became dinner or not seemed to be a free pass to their future.

This would be answer to the food supply problem could have rode for centuries, unfortunately more and more people were going the religious route and no matter what religion that was, all of them preached against lust. Therefore, what to do now that there were no more perverts to prey upon? When all the vampires of the city began to go mad from hunger the answer again became clear as crystal. A female vamp named Crystal Harris brought the new answer to their problems. She was a pretty little thing with long legs and a skinny waist, with tits that were barely supported by her tiny frame. Her long dark hair fell at waist level and the bangs stopped right above her eyes so that it seemed as though she was always peering out from a dark veil. Her pouty lips deepened red from the bloodstains seemed to be the haunt in schoolboys' dreams. They wanted her and would do just about anything be the one to peel away the clothes her pale skin beneath. 

She first started feeding in private, without the knowledge of the elders. She didn't mean to go without permission, but one dark night while she was prowling both of her appetites overtook her. His hot body pressing against hers as he fondled her ass, his cock rubbing between her thighs forcing her skirt to ride up; almost exposing the bites where she had first become one of the dark ones herself. She could feel the heat rising in her body, the wetness between her legs causing her head to swim- she was losing control and she knew it. It wasn't until she felt her fangs start to protrude that she pushed him away. 

He didn't take the rejection very well, even as he pushed her to the ground and ripped away her panties, she smiled. At first he didn't notice, he didn't care what her facial expression was at this point. He only cared about what was going between her legs; he concentrated on lining up his cock with her hole. He felt the slick hot juice began to flow and almost lost his load right there. Her voice was husky and deep as she whispered in his ear, "Let me swallow it".

His eyes wide with anticipation, he still never focused on her face until she was perched between his thighs; his cock engorged with blood and his heart racing he glanced down finally seen her deep green eyes staring up at him. His dick clenched in her hand, he was unable to get away, even as she raked her fangs against the head of his dick. He threw his head back half in fear, but mostly in delight.

The pain was exquisite; his brain was swirling with this unbelievable mixture of fear and full on arousal. He forced himself to raise his head up from the ground and look back down at her just in time to see her deep throat his cock. Her oral cavity seemed never ending as she took the length of him in her mouth. He moaned as he felt the quivers go all through his body; his stomach tightened, then rose and fell in deep pants.

In guttural shouts she could hear him yell to her, "Please swallow it, oh god please swallow."

She removed it from her mouth long enough to give him the brief comfort, "Don't worry Hun, I plan on it."

As she took it back in her mouth she once again allowed him to remember the fear of her fangs. Allowing them to draw the first blood from the mushroom head of his cock, before she bit down removing his cock right at the shaft and then swallowing it in it's entirety; still hard, still engorged with blood, and while he lay there screaming. With his formerly attached appendage to take the sting out of her hunger she brought him back to the pack to feed upon.

to be continued...



The Writer and The Word (01)



British Airways flight 481, scheduled to depart at 11:20 hrs on the 29th of June, had long been fully booked. Indeed, it would this June day be packed to the rafters. Flight 481 was the late morning flight from London Heathrow, and was scheduled to arrive at Boston's Logan International Airport a bit past three in the afternoon. The Boeing 777-300, now sitting empty on the ramp, seemed to groan in anticipation of the massive load it would carry in just a few hours time. As the wing tanks filled with jet fuel, the wing tips drooped ominously. Literally tens of thousands of pounds of jet fuel would be needed to carry the almost 300 passengers across the northern Atlantic Ocean, and against the prevailing force of the westerly setting Jetstream. 

It had been an unusually warm June, and the post-Wimbledon rush had set in; Heathrow was beset with summer holiday makers from America and Asia coming and going in a never ending stream. The post 9-11 atmosphere of increased security, and the interminable lines for security screening that had ensued, had created a newer, more modern version of Travelers Hell. This tense atmosphere, when combined with the overtaxed and failing air conditioning system in Terminal 3, frayed tempers for passengers and employees alike; malevolence grew like black fungus under rotting leaves.

A long black Mercedes Benz S 600 carefully slid through the chaotic snarl of traffic in front of Heathrow Terminal 3, and smoothly came to a stop in front of the British Airways International Departures entrance. The black-suited driver exited the driver's door on the right side of the automobile and gracefully moved to the right rear door and opened it. A pair of long black nylon sheathed legs drifted out of the car and returned to the land of mere mortals; an elegant black suited - and utterly feminine - form emerged from the car and stood in statuesque splendor, preening in peregrine glory. She struck the hand holding a black kid-leather Gucci carry-on, and walked purposefully into the terminal building.

Diane Westhoven did not like airports. Nor did she care for sweating, smelly throngs of herd-like tourists who had to be spoon fed information just to make it from their hotel buses to the check-in line at the World Traveler desk. What a nice name for coach class, she thought to herself. Make the cattle feel like millionaires for the six hour flight across the Atlantic, then shove them out the door and back into their pathetic little lives!

Diane Westhoven had never flown coach in her life! How dare you even imply such a thing!

She by-passed the throngs of cattle queuing up with their 229 dollar tickets and walked assuredly though quietly to the vacant First-Class check-in desk.

"Good Morning, Ms Westhoven," the check-in girl said. She had recognized the face instantly as it came into view. And she knew Ms Westhoven's reputation well. "Will you be returning to Boston today?"

"Well, good morning . . ." Diane Westhoven paused to look at the name tag on the crisp navy blue uniform, ". . . Jennifer. Yes, Logan, on 481."

Jennifer promptly handed Diane her boarding pass, having taken note that her baggage had been through checked from the Savoy. "Would you care for an escort through security this morning, Mam?"

"Yes, Jennifer, if you please."

Jennifer pushed a discreet button, signaling the security services that a VIP was at the counter, waiting to be escorted through screening. Of course, so escorted Diane Westhoven would by-pass all the screening lines used by the cattle, and be walked directly to the First Class Passenger's Lounge. An anonymous looking man in an anonymous looking suit arrived, and walked Diane Westhoven through an unmarked mahogany door behind the counter.

Jennifer Keating gave a huge sigh of relief. You didn't piss off Diane Westhoven and keep your job. She stood facing an empty counter . . .

+

Sumner Welles was not in quite the same line Ms Westhoven had been. He was in the World Traveler line, about 40 people were ahead of him, and most of them were friends and classmates of his from Harvard. To a one, all of the young men and women in this line shuffled huge backpacks along the polished white terrazzo floor in front of themselves, and, to a one, they were all dressed in walking shorts and t-shirts, dirty gray knee socks and truly massive hiking boots. To varying degrees, they were all - simply and utterly - filthy, and more than one of them hadn't bathed in over a week. Few people not with this group stood near them.

Sumner Welles was the last member of his group in this line. He brought up the rear of the line, just as he had been doing for the past three weeks as the little group had hiked, climbed, and camped in the Scottish Highlands. He rounded up stragglers. Kept the weaker ones in tow, kept flagging spirits up. He would be a senior this coming year, and had been escorting a group of in-coming first year students on a freshman orientation trip. He was a brilliant student, and was assured entry in Harvard Law if for no other reason than his father, grandfather, and great grandfather had all matriculated from John Harvard's little college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and each had passed on to Harvard Law.

Sumner was one of those rare people who never tried to impress people. He didn't have to. People anywhere would look at him - and in some alpha-male kind of way - they knew he was a man of substance, a force to be reckoned with. People in general respected him, without even knowing why or how they came to feel that way. Women young and old gravitated toward him, while lesser men gave way to him. As people passed through the concourse that June morning, their eyes would unconsciously move to look at Sumner Welles. They would instantly receive the startling impression of having looked an eagle in the eyes.

Sumner was also one helluva nice guy. He'd been an excellent tutor to incoming freshmen, an editor of The Crimson his junior year. When scholarship kids on campus needed help to fly home for vacations or to buy some necessity, they received help, anonymously, but from Sumner. And while people knew, Sumner really could have cared less. He thought the world had been remarkably generous to his family, and that it was his duty to reach out and help his fellow man when they reached out for help.

But let's be frank here . . . Sumner's family's holdings in the Americas, Europe, and Asia were reported by Fortune Magazine to be worth somewhere in the vicinity of twenty billion dollars. Buying some kid a ticket on Delta wasn't going to break the Welles family bank. No matter which Welles family bank it happened to be.

The kids in the World Traveler line ground their way to the counter one by one, got their boarding passes, and shuffled off to the security queues on the other side of the automatic sliding, frosted-glass doors. The girl in the line ahead of Sumner was, as she had been for three weeks now, overtly flirting with Sumner, and as she had for several days noted, was making absolutely no progress toward 'getting to know him better'. She stepped up to the counter, was processed and moved off toward the frosted glass doors. The doors hissed open as she approached, and hissed after she had passed.

Sumner approached the counter and handed over his passport to the blond-haired girl standing behind the blue laminate wall. She had yet to look up at him from her post; she looked at the passport photo as he told her his name and destination. Then she looked up. And gasped audibly. She went moist between the thighs almost immediately, and stammered out a very polite "Good Morning, sir."

"Good morning to you to, Angela. You keeping cool in there?" Sumner was so nice he probably wasn't aware of the little double entendres he tossed out to people as he made his way through life. Who knows, maybe he wasn't aware. But, perhaps you'll want make up your own mind about that . . .

Angela did catch his little play on words, however, and instantly turned deep red from her chest to her face, and she had to force herself not to give in too his delicately understated awareness of her reaction to him and so ruin the moment. 

But, and this is important, all Sumner had noticed was that the girl behind the counter was world class cute; she had those luminous English eyes that you could swim in. He caught himself staring at her face, but he felt like he was caught in a whirlpool.

"Oh!" she said, looking at the little display built into the counter-top. "I'm sorry Mr Welles, but it seems we're over-booked today. I'm afraid there are no seats available until . . . no, wait, seat 2b just came up. I don't suppose you'd mind sitting up in First today?" she asked playfully.

"Is that all you've got? I really want to keep with my group." He was enthralled with her face, wanted to look at her for as long as he could. "Could you check again?"

She tapped away at her keyboard . . . "I'm sorry sir, that's all that's available. And I'm afraid you can't switch seats with someone else once it's been assigned to you. Part of the new security regulations, you know."

Sumner blinked rapidly several times. "That's it then?"

"I'm afraid so, sir. Unless you want to wait for the four thirty flight."

He seemed to think a minute. "Well, 2b or not 2b, that is the question. Right?"

Angela laughed, then it just came out - "My god, you're gorgeous!" - before she could catch herself; then the poor girl exploded into shades of purple and crimson Sumner was sure had never existed in nature until this very moment. He thought she was the most charming women he had ever seen in his life . . .

. . . and as Sumner was a decisive sort of fellow, he made up his mind about this sort of thing rather quickly. He took out his passport wallet and slipped a business card into his hand. He leaned forward quickly, invading the young woman's space without thought or care, and said to her in quietly reassuring tones, "And you've got the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in my life. If you ever come to Boston, please give me a ring, would you?" He handed her the card, squeezed her hand as if to reassure her that he felt much the same way she did.

It was against every rule in the British Airways book, she knew, which does not at all account for why she replied, "How about next weekend, then?"

Again, decisiveness was one of Sumner's defining traits.

"My email address is on the card. Let me know when to pick you up."

"Well, Mr Welles, here are your boarding documents," she said, still flushing. She then lowered her voice to a politely conspiratorial level and said, "Friday afternoon, 'bout three thirty on 481, O.K.?"

Sumner took the documents, and her hand, which he clasped lightly. "I'll see you Friday. And I promise I'll be there." And then he was off through the frosted-glass doors himself.

+

Diane Westhoven was settling into seat 2a, a flute of decidedly inferior Champagne resting on her nylon clad knee. The reclining leather couchette, complete with on board audio-video entertainment system, internet access, and telephone, was wide enough to hold two Diane Westhovens, perhaps a third if you really wanted to force the matter. Her hands were clasped together in her lap, and she looked out the window at the worker-ants down below loading baggage and running about madly in excited non-purpose. 

A rather shabbily dressed young man came down the left aisle toward the front of the now-swollen Boeing, and stopped at the vacant seat next to Diane Westhoven's, who looked up at the scabrous thing standing there in all of it's bohemian glory with almost open contempt just waiting to ooze from her mouth. But she looked at the young man, and caught herself. 'Oh, my!' she said to herself, 'this could be fun! Delicious!' She caught herself licking her lips.

+

Sumner Welles looked at the woman in the window seat, and his standard taxonomy kicked into classification mode. 'Nouveau riche, post menopausal, married three times, smart as a box of rocks, high maintenance . . .' But he caught himself, recognized her face from somewhere, and unconsciously dropped into his best Beacon Hill Brahman. That is to say, he dropped into his usual normal, polite, though somewhat reserved way of being when meeting a stranger. He put his camera bag into the overhead, then asked with a wry show of humor, "Is this seat taken, my lady?" 

"Oh, by all means," the woman said. "Be my guest, kind sir." Take that!

Sumner sat down, and the rather pungent nature of his current aromatic state filled the air around rows one through four. 

Completely. 

Diane Westhoven wrinkled her nose and looked away to the tarmac tableau outside her window, and shook her head in disgust. 'They'll let anyone up here these days,' she said under her breath, but just loud enough for the young man to hear.

+

Flight 481 taxied toward the beginning of the runway and turned at fairly high speed on to the active and went to full throttle. The flight crew wanted to use every inch of runway; the big Boeing was loaded well up to it's maximum gross take-off weight, and it was hot outside on the ground. It thundered down the runway, but seemed to pick up speed slowly.

Sumner looked at his watch as the 777 started down the runway; timing the takeoff was, he knew, the best way for a passenger to get an early indication that something was wrong. He had heard many professional pilots tell him that anything over forty seconds was the time to pucker up that asshole and hang on tight.

The jetliner hurtled down the runway and began to rotate with about 15oo feet of runway left, and climbed ever so slowly into the sky just short of the grass at the runway's end; the ride felt very, very rough. Instead of climbing steeply away from the ground, the Boeing was barely gaining altitude.

Sumner looked down at the woman next to him; her white knuckled fingers were digging into his wrist. Any harder, he thought, and she'll draw blood. He put his other hand on top of hers and gave her straining hand a reassuring touch.

She looked over at him with almost wild-eyed terror tearing at her face. The jet took an especially big sinking bump and she opened her hand to his, and clung to it fiercely.

+

"Ah, ladies and gentlemen, this is First Officer Andrews up here on the flight deck. We're a little heavy today, and it's going to take a while to climb up out of this messy air down near the ground. Sorry about the ride, but we should begin to feel a smoother ride in about five minutes or so. We anticipate arriving at Boston's Logan Airport . . ."

"My God in heaven! You mean to tell me," Diane Westhoven exclaimed incredulously, "that was a normal take-off?" The jet jumped and banked to the left. Her hand was still fused in the young man's welcoming grasp.

"That was . . . rather exciting, wouldn't you say?" Sumner Welles said. "Frankly, I'd have just as soon have an appendectomy."

Diane looked over at the young man and burst out laughing. She started to laugh harder, almost hysterically, and passed the point of no return. She started to cry she was laughing so hard, and was soon gasping for breath. Sumner felt the release and caught the laughter that floated through the air; he started laughing to blow off the dread and tension that had filled his mind with near terror only moments ago.

Laughter is often, and was at this moment becoming very contagious. Diane's laughter spread first to nearby rows, then like an avalanche, huge waling choruses of knee-slapping shrieks built and rolled through first class, then cascaded into business class. 

The people in coach must have groused that they were passing out too much free booze up front.

+

"Well, I suppose you may have your hand back now," Diane said, "but I must admit, I was rather enjoying it."

"Next time we start to crash, it's all yours, Mam."

"Diane, please call me Diane. And thank you, I'll keep that in mind."

"Sumner Welles, a pleasure to meet you." She took his hand again, this time more gently.

"Diane Westhoven."

"The writer?"

She always reacted to this question with schizoid partitions: one compartment detested her fame, her frank notoriety; the other compartment would have perished without recognition of her accomplishments. Her fame had sustained her, in any event, socially as well as sexually as she had aged well into her 50s.

"Yes, the very same . . ." she said.

Sumner held his tongue, barely. Diane Westhoven had been a joke in Lit classes at Harvard; they had in fact been required reading as examples of 20th-Century Trash. The Trends in American Literature class had read three of her works to compare the psuedo-psycho-babble of her awkward prose with the dangerously elegant prose of DeSade, whom she, apparently, fancied herself the legitimate heir to. She wrote trashy romance novels with a very dark undercurrent of sado-masochism running through the vapid action, and her works had catalyzed the resurgence of a watered down psuedo-S&M lifestyle - as it was regarded by those who presided over such things - throughout suburban bedrooms all around America, and beyond. Her pernicious books had sold millions, principally to jaded women, according to his Harvard prof, with very low self-esteem. Victoria's Secret, on the other hand, hand made billions.

"It's an honor to meet you, Ms Westhoven," he said with utterly transparent charm.

"I have to ask, Sumner, what have you been up to, and just why in God's name do you smell like a goat!?"

Sumner felt himself laughing again with this remark. He told her of escorting the Harvard freshmen, the climbing and camping, the less than primitive conditions they had been living in for three weeks. He mentioned the over-booking and the last minute seat change, and she took on an icy demeanor for a moment, then recovered. She asked polite questions, and was, he thought, a very good listener. After several minutes of talking with her, he realized he was enjoying himself. She had, however, steered the conversation toward the girls on the trip, and hinted at wanting to know might have happened between boys and girls in the dark of night; obviously, Sumner thought, she was fishing for an opening to begin proselytizing the S&M thing. He had nothing he wanted to share, however, and the conversation had languished.

The jet had been climbing for a half hour, and finally leveled off; the flight crew turned off the seat belt light and anxious, green-faced people dashed for the toilets. Sumner excused himself, and headed back and check on his charges in the back of the jet.

+

Diane had enjoyed the young man immensely, thought he was charming in his Ivy-league preppy-snobbish sort of way. But there was so much more there, she thought, toying with the germ of an idea. 

Diane Westhoven played-out her fantasies, then recounted them in fictionalized form, interpreting them from the perspective that only intellectualizing from a safe distance would provide. She saw in Sumner Welles an ideal next play-thing, saw the outline of her next book forming in the air before her eyes. She reclined her seat, the leg rests rose into position under her silky calves, and she closed her eyes behind huge black sunglasses, a smile forming on her face as she fit the puzzle-pieces of her plan into place. 

+

Sumner strode back to coach, ignoring the stares that seemed to form in the air and follow in his wake. All of the other members of his group were gathered across the last four rows at the back of the jet. Even he could tell as he approached the group that the smells of hygiene ignored too long went beyond the merely potent and were truly offensive. He really shouldn't have allowed this to happen, he thought. He walked up to his co-chaperone and best friend, Marc Tutwiler, and pulled him up, lead him to the very back of the jet by the galley and wash-rooms.




The Writer and The Word (01)



"You've no idea how bad this group stinks, Marc. Man, we really fucked up coming in this morning instead of last night. We all should have bathed before getting on the plane."

"I don't smell anything." Marc said.

"Yeah, Marc, that's the problem . . ."

+

He walked back toward the front of the jet, and on re-entering First Class, one of the Flight Attendants asked his seat assignment. Sumner gave the Attendant his boarding pass, and so satisfied, the young woman turned to resume other duties. He asked her quickly, before she had turned completely away, if they had any shirts and cologne on the duty-free cart.

"I'll just go and check, Mr Welles. About what size, and colour would you care for."

"Ah, about a large, and white'll do. I think I'll just pop on into the head here, and try to wash up a bit. Just knock, would you?"

The gorgeous red-headed young woman hurried off, grateful to be away from the stench.

+

Sumner approached his seat in the second row in a crisp white polo shirt embroidered with the British Airways logo, and smelling faintly of Issey Miyake for Men. He felt better having splashed soap and water on his chest and under his arms; he'd even tried to have a go at washing up down below, but he knew that was a fool's errand. As he got to his seat he looked at Diane Westhoven laid out on her couchette. 'Actually a very good looking woman,' he thought.

She was, of course, dressed entirely in black. She wore a summer weight silk suit, and was adorned sparingly with just the faintest bit of austere white gold jewelry on her right wrist, and around her right ankle. She wore black stockings and pumps; her stocking tops were just peeking out from under the hem of her skirt, which must have ridden up, Sumner thought, as she changed positions in her seat. She must have been a little over five feet tall, but not much so, and her shockingly white skin stood in stark contrast to her jet black hair. He fingernails were painted blood red.

His eyes lingered over her recumbent form for several seconds; he appreciated beauty and women who relished their femininity. It was, he decided, her legs that stood out to him, that were causing that little electric feeling to spread in his groin. He took in her form for a few moments more, then took his seat, taking great care not to mangle his now stiffening cock.

+

Diane Westhoven loved hiding behind her dark sunglasses. She relished the feeling of men taking her beauty in, unaware that she was watching their every thought and movement take shape in the air between them. Knowledge was power, she knew, and through power came the will to control others. Bend them to shapes of her choosing, or discard them as she saw fit.

Diane Westhoven loved taking in the young man's form standing there above her, unapologetically looking at her, the form of his desire growing unabated in his grimy shorts. She shifted her position ever so slightly in pre-planned maneuver and watched his reaction as her silky black skirt rode up her creamy white thigh, revealing her black nylon stocking's lacy bands and her garter's silky straps. She hoped she had been able to suppress her smile as the young man quickly took his seat and straightened out his shorts.

+

Flight Attendants and Stewards soon came down both aisles in stately procession - pushing sterling silver serving carts adorned with huge slabs of roast beef on maple carving boards. Each passenger's beef was carved there, in the aisle, and placed on fine china, accompanied by creamed spinach and Yorkshire Pudding. The Steward asked each passenger if they cared for lobster with their beef, and those who so affirmed were served freshly steamed Maine lobster tails. Flight attendants followed the Stewards with a modest selection of wines on separate, though no less ornate carts.

Diane asked for and was prepared three very thin slices of beef, and on replying that, yes, should love some lobster today, the steward took a steaming tail out of his covered compartment, and took the meat out of the shell. This he sliced, and placed carefully next to the beef. At her request, he placed drawn butter on the tail, and he ceremoniously moved his creation to the little polished mahogany table that had grown out of her seat.

The Steward asked Sumner for his desired cut of beef.

"I guess a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is out of the question?"

He made do with roast beef, and a little lobster, too, if you please.

+

After dinner had been cleared, and after-dinner drinks served, the cabin lights had dimmed and window shades lowered. Sumner took out the shrink-wrapped woolen blanket and covered his bare legs with it; he wanted to sleep the rest of the way to Logan if he could. Diane had tossed down a finger of Chivas, neat, then put her legs up again and promptly dropped off to sleep. Her body had drifted toward Sumner's; he took in her scent and felt himself stirring again.

+

Diane felt herself bunching in excitement as she lowered her head to the young man's shoulder, feigned sleep on his yielding muscles. After an interminable wait, she dropped the hand that had been under her chin squarely into his lap, and she began to snore gently. Her hand made languid, aimless arcs across the top of the blanket in Sumner's lap. Just as abruptly, after a few minutes of ambiguous caresses, she pulled her hand back to her face.

+

Sumner had been in that airy zone between awake and asleep, drifting deep inside currents of warm ethers, when he had felt Diane's head slip onto his shoulder. He felt himself smile at the sweetness of the gesture, then returned to the downward spin toward sleep. The jolt that shot through his body as her hand hit his crotch was unmistakable. He didn't open his eyes, but every sense in his body went into primitive readiness. Her hand drew smooth arcs around his cock, and he found himself growing under the relentless pressure. All he could consciously think about was that it had been more than a month since he had come; his body was taking care of all those other tiny little details that were popping up unannounced . . .

+

'Ooohh, that was fun,' Diane Westhoven thought, barely suppressing her laughter. Now to let him stew in his juices a minute . . .

. . . She moved her foot, still encased in the black high heeled pump, from her footrest over onto Sumner's, next to his left leg. With the tip of the shoe, she began to draw lazy circles on his shin and ankle. She could feel him shift in his seat, but he did not move away, and after a moment of this she heard his involuntary moan. It was time to strike . . .

. . . She reached down with her hand and removed the shoe, and placed it in his lap. She smoothly ran her hand back up the outside of the blanket - over his thigh - then returned the motion, now under the blanket. She ran her fingernails down the top of his thigh, felt him shiver, brought her stiletto nails up the inside of his thigh, and repeated the motion very, very slowly for several minutes. She wanted her nails to leave marks on his flesh, she wanted to mark her territory. She dug them in more forcefully, and felt him stiffen, felt him work to repress the shriek of pain that sought involuntary release. She relented, then brought her hands to his shorts, and undid the belt buckle over his belly. She did this with practiced ease, then unsnapped the waistband, and pulled down the zipper. Her hand sought the elastic of his undershorts, and her long fingers moved into warmth and encircled the young man's now totally hard cock. 

God, she thought, how she loved young men. And young cocks. U S Steel had never crafted an alloy as hard as this young man's cock. She felt her own warmth spreading through her legs and belly.

As her fingers began their work, she took one of Sumner's hands and brought it to her face; she took two of his smooth fingers into her mouth and sucked on them, rolled her tongue over them. She took her hand, the hand under the blanket gripping the young man's cock, and began moving it slowly up and down the shaft, twisting on the up-stroke, lightly raking the skin with her nails as she rammed her grasping fingers down into his pubic hair.

She leaned up and looked at the young man. He turned and met her eyes directly.

"Does that feel good, Sumner?"

"Yes, it does."

"Do you want me to stop, Sumner?"

He looked at her, shook his head.

"Tell me you want me to continue, Sumner. I want you to beg me to continue."

Well, I can play along here a little bit, he thought. "Diane, please continue."

"Sumner . . ." she drew the name out playfully, "that's not begging."

"Oh, please Diane, please . . ." With that the ministrations she delivered increased slightly in speed and intensity.

"That's better, slave. I want to own your soul . . . will you give me your soul?"

He still looked her directly in the eyes. "You know, Ms Westhoven, that probably reads real good to some desperate housewife at the beauty parlor in East Bumfuck, New Jersey. But not to me. You're a broken joke, and you need to stop fucking with other people's lives."

Diane Westhoven felt her carefully crafted world turn to frozen glass, then shatter in the roiled air of his words. She shook as contrapuntal waves of anger and despair swept over her. She felt the one emotion roll over and through the core of her being that she had never, not once in her life, felt. She rolled under the impact of total rejection. Tears came to her in an unexpected rush, and she quickly, desperately, turned her back to the young man.

Sumner Welles got himself together under cover of the blanket, and walked to the back of the plane. He gave Marc his boarding pass and sent him forward.

I'm sure she'll enjoy his company, he thought.

+

As British Airways flight 481 sped westward across the Atlantic, Angela White gathered her lunch kit and umbrella and made her way through the belly of Terminal 3 to the employee shuttle that would run her over to the Piccadilly Line. She boarded silently, anonymously, blended into the late afternoon commuting crowd. They bus wound through heavy traffic and stopped at the Tube Station. She made her way to the platform, and boarded the next train, taking a seat in the middle of the car. The seats faced inward, and she looked down at the floor as the train gathered speed and took off on the thirty minute run into London. She changed for the Circle Line and headed toward Paddington Station, where she disembarked. She went through security at the exit, then rode the escalator up into the station. After stopping at the little grocery in the station, she walked the few short blocks south to the flat she shared with three BA Flight Attendants. 

Angela White had been, when she rented the flat, a Flight Attendant as well, until her father had taken ill almost a year ago. With her mother long gone, to New Zealand, in point of fact, she had requested a change in assignment that would allow her to remain close to her father's home and not be away from town. Then, as fall had turned to winter, she needed to the near the hospital. He had passed in late April, and the cold loneliness she felt with his passing had yet to leave her completely.

The girls she shared the flat with were rarely home. They were on Hong Kong and Tokyo runs, and their layovers were long and frequent, so she was not surprised to come into the little flat and find herself alone once again. She placed her groceries in the little fridge, then moved about the flat's three rooms opening windows. In the early summer evening, with the Sun still high in the western sky, she listened to the steady parade of cars on the street below; breathed in life that pulsed through the giant city's heart like the very blood of life itself.

She sat in a modern overstuffed lime-green chair, and flipped off her shoes. She took up the old dog-eared copy of James Clavell's Shogun from the table by her side, and picked up reading where she had left off the night before. She wanted to escape into the desperate love affair between Blackthorne and Mariko-san, wanted to affirm the possibility of finding love in a world so full of lonely hearts and broken dreams. As she drifted through the words, the image of Sumner Welles came rushing into her consciousness with a suddenness that had startled her with it's clarity.

Of course she wasn't going to America, run after this boy; she had decided that earlier in the day. But she remembered, vividly, his crisp face and sweet, smooth voice. She had kept the young man's card; it only had his name, a telephone number, and an email address on it. That was very odd, she thought. Perhaps I'll email later tonight, tell him I had a prior commitment, and beg off for some other time. But no hurry, his flight wouldn't land for two more hours. She drifted back into the book, comfortable with her decision to remain behind the walls of her barren-walled loneliness.

Then the telephone rang.

+

The in-coming freshman girl who was so smitten with Sumner, who had limped and complained of blisters so she could remain at the back of the group - back by him - for almost the entire trip, had been totally enthralled when Sumner reappeared in the aft cabin. He had come and spoken with his friend Marc, who was sitting next to her, and then had changed seats with him. As Sumner sat down next to her, she had flushed with excited anticipation.

She noticed that he too was flushed and excited, but almost boiling over with anger.

"Sumner, are you all right?"

"Yeah, Nancy. Just a . . . I was sitting next to a . . . oh, crap!"

"What is it? Did something happen?" Sumner had been unflappable over the past three weeks, and to all of a sudden see him so out of sorts was cause for some alarm. "Sumner?"

"Take it easy, Nance, it's no big deal. Some woman came on to me, and she was kinda weird about it, but I was ugly to her, and that's inexcusable, and I feel just awful about it."

"Oh."

"Get some rest. Long day ahead of us."

But she had already turned away, and her gaze was lost on the receding surface of the ocean so far below. He was like that ocean, she thought, he was speeding away from me. She would never be this close to him again. 

She started to cry. Softly.

+

Diane Westhoven had commanded control of her tears, regained her composure, but continued to reel under opposing waves of anger and hollow rejection. 'This isn't like me,' she thought. 'Men don't affect me this way. What's wrong with me?' She remained fixed on the view of the sea out the window, the bright glare of the Sun at this altitude almost blinding, but she saw in the surface of the ocean below a metaphor for the oceanic loneliness that had found her. 

She had humiliated herself almost as surely as he had. This sudden realization filled her with total self-loathing. Barriers came crashing down, walls that had permitted her to use people as playthings, playthings to be discarded, and the debris of this epiphany fell on her soul in crushing, wounding silence. There was no one there in that silence, no gentle voice to reassure her, comfort her, help her learn from her mistakes and move forward.

She turned white with fear as the final consequence of her life's work appeared spread out over the sea below.

"No love," she said out loud, though quietly, as if in prayer.

+

Sumner got up from his seat and walked to the back of the plane, to the telephones that hung from the walls in little recessed cubbies. He inserted his IATA card into the slot on one of the phones and swiped it, and on getting a dial tone, called his father's secretary in Boston.

"Jean? Sumner. Yes, fine, thank you. The weather was great. He did? You got to be kidding me! Jean, I need you to find a name for me, and a number. I checked in for my flight this morning, and there was this girl at the check in counter; yes, Jean, a girl, blond hair. Yeah, I'm on flight 481. Her name is Angela, and I need her number. I don't think you can call back on this number, so I'll stay on the line."

A thirty-something Flight Attendant had been listening to the exchange, and she approached him.

"Sir, I don't mean to intrude, but I overheard your conversation. It would take an act of Parliament to get an employee name from the home office, let alone a telephone number. Perhaps you'd better let this wait until you arrive in Boston. These calls are frightfully expensive."

Sumner smiled at the thoughtful young woman, and shrugged his shoulders as if to say 'Oh, well, that's the way it goes.' He drummed his fingers on the wall for a minute, picked up a timetable and flipped through it absent-mindedly.

"Yes, Jean, I'm here. Angela White, you say? Yes, could you repeat that please? Right, well please thank him for me, would you? I promise I'll drop him a note, yes Jean, I promise I will, and thanks loads, bye-bye now."

The Flight Attendant was looking at Sumner as if he'd sprouted a second head, and her mouth hung open in consternation as her eyes fluttered in shock.

"No reason to mess with Parliament," he said to the Flight Attendant, "when the PM's office is so obliging."

+

Angela White picked up the telephone on the third ring.

"Hello?"

"Ah, hi, Angela? This is Sumner Welles, we talked this morning when I checked in for flight 481."

"Mr Welles, where are you?"

"Ah, I, ah, let's see. I think we're approaching Nova Scotia."

"And pray tell, Mr Welles, just how did you get my telephone number."

"Could I tell you that on Friday?"

" - - "

"It's just that it's a little complicated . . . and you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Oh, well then. Perhaps you just called the Prime Minister's office!"

"Precisely!"

"I see, ha-ha Mr Welles, nice joke, that. But seriously, where did you get the number?"

"I think I said you wouldn't believe me, didn't I?"

"So, you just dialed up the PMs office, did you? So, how is he?"

"Ah, Angela, I didn't call him. My father's secretary called him."

"Right. Well, that certainly explains everything!"

"Angela, what difference does it make. I wanted your telephone number, and I got it from Santa Claus, O.K.? But, I wanted to talk to you, and I hope that means something."

" - - "

"Hello?"

"Yes, well. What can I do for, Sir"

"First thing, call me Sumner. O.K.?"

"I'll think about that, Mr Welles. What else?"

"About Friday. Are you going to come? I really want you to come."

" - - - "

"Hello? You still there?"

"I'm here, Mr Welles. Why? Why do you want me to come."

"Well, because you said you would. Because when I saw you something inside me just went off with a bang."

"A bang?"

"Crap. I'm sorry. I'm not really very good on the telephone."

"Oh, quite the contrary, Mr Welles. It's been years since I had so much fun on the telie."

"Ah, Miss White, I'm sorry if I . . . I didn't mean to . . . "

"Mr Welles?"

"Yes?"

"Please, call me Angela."

+

Nancy noticed immediately when Sumner returned from the rear of the plane that he was a different person. He seemed buoyant, fresh, and happily talkative. They talked for an hour, perhaps a bit longer, until the Steward announced that cabin Attendants would be coming around with U S Customs declaration forms, and for everyone to be in their assigned seat.

Within moments Marc appeared with the Steward.

"Ah, Mr Welles, you'll need to return to your assigned seat, please."

"Right."

Sumner got up, and thanked Nancy for listening, for being a friend.

Then . . .

"Sum, dude, what did you do to that lady, man? She's been crying for like three hours!"

+

"Oh, crap!"

+

Angela White hung up the telephone. She was suddenly grinning, feeling - explosively - very happy to be alive. She had Sumner's little business card in her hand, and she brought it to her mouth and kissed it. She wasn't aware that she was hopping around and shouting until the people in the flat below pounded on their ceiling, her floor, and told her to 'keep it down!'.




The Writer and The Word (01)



+

Sumner sat back down in 2b, and did his best to be quiet about it. The woman sat with her forehead against the window, appeared to be transfixed on the sea below. The Steward came around and handed him a Customs form, and another for Sumner to pass on to the woman in 2a. He held the form a moment, turned over in his mind what he wanted, what he needed to say. Then he tapped her forearm lightly.

She turned around slowly, almost gently, and looked at him. Her sunglasses were gone now, and her eyes were tear-streaked wrecks of mascara and puffy red splotches. She smiled uneasily, but said nothing.

"I have your Customs form, you know, the things you bought abroad form."

She looked down briefly at the little narrow piece of paper, then back at Sumner.

"I'm sorry, Miss Westhoven, I really am. That was an inexcusably foul way to talk to a lady, and you really didn't deserve that . . . I should have been mature enough to handle that differently. I am truly, truly sorry."

"You . . ." Her face reddened, a single tear formed under her right eye, then slowly began to run down her cheek. Clearly, she couldn't speak right now. ". . . Sorry?"

Sumner reached across and took her hand in his; with that simple gesture she burst into tears. He held her hand in his and looked her in the eye. After a moment she grew quiet, then in a shuddering disjointed voice managed to convey sorrow at her deceptiveness, the manipulative courses of action that had ruled her life, perhaps ruined her life. 

As she talked, she came to grips with her feelings, and she she calmed a bit, then resumed in a steadier voice. She laid bare her feelings to Sumner: that she had always felt she was repulsive to men, and through that feeling she had attracted darkness and loneliness into her life - and never honest relationships - never love. With that die cast, she had led a psuedo-life through her fictional characters. What he, Sumner, had said made perfect sense, galvanized these thoughts and feelings into a single, loathsome reality . . .

"I have never truly loved anyone in my life," she said. "And I now know that I have never been truly loved."

He looked at her sitting there, and wanted to reach out to her lost soul, but he could not. He felt she looked like an animal, bleeding and desperate, and caught in a trap. Perhaps a trap of her own making, but a trap none-the-less. He did not believe in feeling pity on or for another human being, but some shred of humanity tore at him as he looked at her. 

"I'm so sorry I've done this to you, Diane."

"Oh, Sumner, that's so sweet, but honestly, I've done this to myself." She drew in a deep breath, seemed to shake off her tears, come to a decision. "But Sumner, I think I have a bigger problem than all that other stuff."

She paused, unsure of herself.

"I desperately want to know you better than I do."

Sumner Welles was shocked, at a loss for words.

"I just want to have lunch with you, perhaps, from time to time. Truly, Sumner, I want to know you better . . . I don't want to walk off this plane today and never see you again. I don't think I could bare that, so, please don't say no right away, please, just think about it. Would you?"

"Alright, Diane. I promise I'll think about it."

"Now, dear thing, would you help me fill out this dreadful form?"

+

BA flight 481 landed uneventfully in Boston a little after three that afternoon. Sumner and Diane sat in their seats as the rest of the passengers deplaned, though they talked to each other hardly at all. Finally, he took out his passport case and handed the woman his card.

"Diane . . . When things have settled down for you, perhaps in a day or two, give me a call. I won't be available this coming week or weekend, however, to meet with you. But, please call if you think I can help you in some way. But, Diane. Please think about what you're doing, question what is truly in your heart, before you decide to call me. I don't know where you'll find answers to your questions, but I do doubt that you'll find them with me." He took her hand and bid her a good evening, and walked hastily out of the now empty jet.

Diane Westhoven sat there in silence for a moment. She looked like a hollow reed bowing to the pressure of a cold northern wind.

"No love," she said quietly. "Lost."

She walked unsteadily from the jet.

'Why so alone?' she thought as she watched the little clots of people walking ahead of her into the concourse. 

She watched Sumner Welles' form recede into the distance, then disappear into the shifting form of the crowd.

'Why do I feel so small?'

"Lost," she said, quietly. As if in prayer.

Part II coming in a couple of days. Comments appreciated.



The Writer and The Word (02)



Angela White sat in an expansive business class seat just ahead of the Boeing 777's wing, and having passed on the heavy meal and taken only a few sips of water after take-off, had dropped off into an anxiously light sleep as the jet made it's way westward across the Atlantic. Being an employee of British Airways, she had managed to get a vacant seat that would allow her to sleep comfortably and deplane rapidly. She had brought along only a small rolling carry-on, the standard BA issue for Flight Attendants, and a handbag. She planned on staying in Boston this Friday night, all day Saturday, and return to London on the Sunday evening flight. She did not, however, have to be back at work for a fortnight.

She had met Sumner Welles only last Sunday, and only briefly when she had checked him in for the late morning flight to Boston, but she had been shocked and embarrassed by her transparent attraction to him. And all the more so when she had briefly held his hand over the check-in counter at Heathrow Terminal 3, and he had handed her his card, and asked her to, in effect, come to Boston and visit him. But what had shocked her the most, when she looked back on the incident later that day, was how she so readily assented to his invitation. 'How about next weekend' she had blurted out in the almost hypnotic adolescent state she was in when she had looked into those eyes. She had never seen anything like those eyes before in her life!

And then he had said practically the same thing to her - that he thought her eyes - well, special was the only word she could recall. Then she had melted into a puddle of pubescent joy, and gone completely bubble-headed as he walked off to his flight. But as that day had passed, doubts intruded on the spell he had cast, and she had resolved not to carry on with the affair any further. 

And then Sumner had called. From flight 481! And what was all that nonsense about getting her telephone number from Santa Claus or the Prime Minister's office! But when all was said and done . . .

. . . He had said that he wanted her, wanted her to come to Boston, and that while he couldn't put his finger on just what had passed between them, he thought their mutual attraction important enough to risk being thought a total fool by her, that he wanted her to know where he stood, where his heart was coming from. And he had, thankfully, repeated his assertion that he was lousy at talking on the telephone! They had talked for several more minutes, and it had been easy to talk to him, it felt natural to talk to him, and he had actually listened to what she'd had to say for a change . . . not like the typical football types that haunted the nightspots and pubs around London. He seemed different. Magnetically so.

And then she'd emailed him - probably while he was still airborne - and she'd repeated what they had said on the telephone only minutes before. She had ended that first email with a simple assertion: she said that ever since meeting him earlier that day, while holding his hand in her heart in the hours since, she had simply gone weak in the knees at the very thought of him. Writing that - seeing those words on the screen of her little white iBook - had taken her by surprise. It took seeing that sentence on the screen to make all of the feelings she had encountered that day resolve into some kind of sense. Her finger had hovered over the 'Send' button for a few moments - as she pondered the import of those words to her, and, perhaps, to him - then she had sent her feelings winging into binary code to emerge on the far side of the ocean. To finish their journey in the eyes of a man she didn't know, but all of a sudden felt like she had known all her life.

+

Nancy Greenbaum had left Sumner Welles at the Harvard Square T station, and she was in a huff! Her three weeks on the trip to Scotland in such close proximity to him, and her instant attraction to him, had been an overwhelming experience for her. She had always been a stranger in a strange land, a Jew swimming in a Gentile sea, the culture of 'Generica' an ever present reminder to her of everything that could go wrong in a democratic society, and had. America was, to her, the homogenized land of Wal-Mart and MacDonald's, of movies extolling the virtues of non-conformity by conforming to the arbitrary dictates of fad and manufactured illusion. America was a culture that worshiped violence as the way to settle conflict - any conflict, then it's peace loving citizenry paraded to churches and proclaimed that Jesus was the way and the light. Amerika - as she now spelled out the name - had become the land of hypocrisy and warped values. And Sumner should very well have personified all she loathed about her country; he could very well someday be it's King.

Her parents had provided her with a comfortable - though still very Jewish - home to grow and come of age in. But, both her parents being physicians, they became a distant force in her life as she reached adolescence, and she had grown up - in the truest sense - in an exclusive New England boarding school. But her father always had been - and perhaps always would be - the dominant factor in her life. When she had a problem, he was the one she turned to, he would be there with love in his heart, and no strings attached. 

Over the course of her high school years, Nancy had become increasingly more liberal politically, and she soon grew to detest the rich, young, and often mean-spirited boys she was in school with. They were anti-father figures to her - men she would never trust, boys, really, who loved to play games and shred hearts. Many of her teachers had been lesbians, and one had seduced her, and introduced her to the feelings and experiences of intimate love and trust for the first time in her 'adult' life. She had, as so many girls in America had in the 90s, fallen in love with the antiestablishmentarian non-conformity of the lesbian lifestyle. Would she have been able to appreciate the irony of her conformity had time been kinder to her?

And then she had met Sumner Welles. She had been attracted to him, though she couldn't understand why. He was the antithesis of everything she had come to value over the past four years, and yet the more she was around him, the more she listened to him, the more convinced she became that he represented the one true course of her destiny. She had listened with her heart as he had thanked her for her friendship after they had talked on the flight home from London. He had agonized about that Westhoven woman a little bit, and how she had tried to seduce him, and that had made Nancy more angry than mere words could describe. The more Sumner had talked to her, the more she became convinced that he loved her. Almost as much as she loved him, she thought now.

The irony of her feelings - that the utter gentility of Sumner Welles and the air of monied aristocracy that surrounded him would have wounded her very Jewish parents to their core - never seemed to enter her consciousness. The fact that this Westhoven woman had humiliated him, well, too bad for her. She planned to take care of that . . . 

Nancy Greenbaum had watched as Sumner had talked to the Westhoven woman on the plane as she had disembarked. She had waited near the jetway exit then followed her to baggage claim, and on to the line to get a taxi. She had entered the line behind her, struck up a conversation with the writer, mentioned that she knew Sumner Welles. With that, the woman's interest had picked up, and she had offered to take Nancy into town. They had struck up an increasingly friendly conversation, and gone to dinner together. Nancy knew that this Westhoven woman was a sexual predator, and she wondered how Diane would respond to being the prey. Nancy had begun to seduce her at dinner that first night, and she could feel the Westhoven womans interest pick up as the evening progressed.

They had taken a taxi together to Nancy's little apartment over by the Museum of Fine Arts, and Nancy had invited her up. Almost as soon as the door had closed behind them, Diane had fallen into Nancy's arms and into a heated embrace. Nancy had moved her hands between the woman's legs, and thrilled when she felt stockings and garters, and no panties. Diane had been wet down there, and ready; Nancy had drifted down on her knees and thrust her tongue between the older woman's legs and assaulted her clitoris.

After Diane had gone weak in the knees, Nancy had pulled her to the floor, then sat astride her face. She had ground her now soaking crotch on Diane's face until she had cum and cum again. Nancy had assumed - quite unknown to her - a very dominant place in Diane's scheme of things. Diane had shattered in the course of the evening - turning from dominance in the wake of Sumner Welles' visceral unmasking - and she had fallen into the, for her, uncharted waters of submission. 

Then Nancy had tossed her out of the apartment with a cruel, almost mocking manner, and Diane had walked out into the night.

But Nancy had called Diane almost every day since their return from London; and she kept baiting her trap. She read most of her Westhoven's books that week, and knew the woman be her words - her needs, wants, and desires - that were poured out on the pages like the ravings of a tormented soul. Nancy had intuited that Westhoven's weakness was simply an inability to commit to love; this she had learned simply by examining Westhoven's many heroine's ultimate dissatisfaction with the hollow affairs described in each of the books, and these affairs seemed quite obviously to Nancy simple permutations of Westhoven's real life sexual encounters. What a hollow wreck this woman was. Nancy began to understand Westhoven better through the week as she read her works, and Nancy found herself being drawn to Diane in a very unexpected way.

As Nancy drew closer to the Westhoven woman, she confirmed that the writer still had designs on Sumner. So Nancy had resolved to intervene. Her own feelings and emotions clouded the landscape of her designs; confusion reigned supreme here.

Nancy had resolved that this was one affair Diane Westhoven would never write about.

+

Diane Westhoven sat in her downtown high-rise condominium late that Friday morning looking out over the River Charles toward MIT and Cambridge. She had tried to write a few times over the past few days, but she felt dry inside. Not merely burned out, but burned up, devastated by Sumner Welles' wholly justified words to her after her hastily orchestrated seduction had fallen into the dust of broken dreams. She had felt in the days since flight 481 that a basic flaw in her humanity had been uncovered. And now there was Nancy. Her surrogate Sumner!

The Greenbaum girl, with her conversations about Sumner and the trip to Scotland in June, had provided her with precious insights to his character, and these insights into his total decency had only served to drive her deeper into the despair that had taken hold of her heart. His complete honesty - she almost needed to say purity - had been as the stake through the heart, the precondition to the conversation that had opened her up, revealed her weakness. . . 

Diane had tried to call Sumner, but every time she picked up the phone her will failed, and she would fall into a morbid depression. Once she had dropped to the floor and cried! She knew this reaction to Sumner was totally out of all proportion to events as they had transpired, but that only made her sense of confusion more acute, and much more disorienting. She had compensated by turning to the opiates of her long established lifestyle, and gone to a few scenes at elegantly underground Newbury Street S&M hangouts. She had listened as men and women groveled at her feet, licked her shoes and legs, promised to obey her every command, and pledged their souls to her. All of these words and actions left her feeling more empty than she could have ever imagined. She returned to the word that had accosted her as Sumner had walked away from her after their arrival in Boston last Sunday afternoon. It drummed in her ears -

Lost. Lost. You Are Lost.

She would putter away for hours, free of the torment of that word, and then it would return to her - assault her with its drumming insinuations of failing humanity. Then . . . 

. . .She would move to write, and it - Lost - would assault her.

She would try to reconnect with some long ago discarded male-supplicant, and the voice on the other end of the phone would reinforce the delusory nature of her - Lost - soul.

Chained within the soft prison of her eminent domain, watching longboats sculling up the Charles, she took out Sumner's card and willed herself to call the number. She knew her life would remain - Lost - within inconsolable bouts of self-loathing and doubt until . . . 

. . . Diane knew that until she could reconcile her life up to the point in time when she met Sumner Welles with the long repressed feelings of lovelessness unleashed by his recognition of some deep-seated inner flaw within her, she would not, indeed could not, embrace any meaningful future. Nancy Greenbaum had driven that thought deep into her heart.

She knew that without his voice, she was - Lost. Oh, Nancy, what have you done to me?

She dialed the number, held the phone tightly, afraid to lose her grip. A grip slipping away that was so rapidly leading down into the pits of some unknown and richly deserved Hell.

+

Sumner Welles picked up his cell phone as it buzzed gently on his desktop, and saw the Caller ID readout. He had expected the call all week. His memory burned with the inexcusable injustice he had done the woman, how wounded she must have been to fall so swiftly to his words. What truth about her life had she denied confronting to lead her to fall so quickly? She had mentioned feeling unlovable, thus, he reasoned, unloved. She had talked at length about the emptiness of her activities with men and women, the 'will to control' she spoke of contaminating all of her relationships, condemning her human contact to little more than an aimless series of power exchange dramas. Was she out of control? Had following her written dramas into her waking life wrecked her? 

She had yet to experience the full range of human emotions, Sumner expected, that come with falling truly, madly, and deeply in love. He suspected he knew where her desires would lead her . . .

He answered the call; he felt ill at ease as he did so.

+

"Sumner?"

"Yes, Diane."

"I . . . I don't know . . . oh, I'm so sorry . . . I called you . . ."

"Diane. You want to tell me something. I asked you to think about what it is you want. Have you?"

"I want you, Sumner."

"Is that what you want to tell me, Diane? You want me . . . and I suppose I have no say in this matter?"

"Oh, that's not what I meant to . . ."

"Ah, well, then. What did you want to say?"

"That I seem to have so few tomorrows ahead of me. I want to spend them with you?"

"Me?"

"I know. It seems so unreal to me, too. I don't know you, at least not in the way I want to know you. But, there it is . . ."

"Perhaps, Diane, it was that I was the first person to call you on something - some way of being that you now find uncomfortable . . . Diane? Perhaps you have been waiting, waiting all of your life for someone to point out that you have chosen a wrong path sometime - somewhere - in your life, and that person - me - would be confirming what you've already known, but were afraid to admit."

"I . . . I - Sumner - I don't know."

"Did you ever consider that you've been waiting for someone to tell you these things? That this conversation, hell, this conversion, stands as a precondition to admitting that you need to feel love?" You need someone as much as they might need you?

"I . . . can't say that . . . I . . ."

"But have you considered this? I think you've recognized that pursuing your present manner of relationships any further will lead to the death of your soul. And I think that by questioning your past, you're trying to come to grips with what you perceive as some basic flaw in your humanity. And now you feel, hell, I don't know, maybe Lost."

"What! . . . How can . . .?" Diane was almost choking on that word - Lost - as she grappled with the precision of his insight.

"How can I see that so clearly?"

"How can you possibly know me so well . . . what I feel?"

"Because I listened to you, Diane. I listened to you as one human being should listen to another. I tried to listen to your words as you meant them to be said, hopefully not just through the filters of my experience. You could not will me to listen, Diane. That is the fallacy of your position; that you can will another human being to act as you wish. Those are games Diane. Not the kind of game that a honest people play. Love isn't a game. But . . . Diane?"

"Yes?"

"Do you know who Arthur Schopenhauer is? Read his work?"

"No."

"Please call me back when you understand why I asked you that question. If you feel like it."

"Sumner. You don't understand. I want you. I need you, now. . ."

"And this is what I am prepared to give you - now. I am willing to talk with you. But understand something, Diane. You must accept that I am not, and will not, control you. Nor will I allow you to control me. I am not willing you to take a course of action. The most precious gift I can give another human being is the will to learn. I'd like to help you, Diane, but please understand: I relate to the world as any other human does, through experience. My experience tells me to help you learn. Learn from your mistakes. . ." He thought of another woman. So recently gone. He still burned inside from the pain.

"Sumner? What if I want more?"

"More? More of what?" Life is so short, he thought.

"You?"

"Diane, there are people who have honest knowledge and experience to share. Do you? You offer to, what, to make me submit to your will? You seek to control other people, to feel safe, but love is a reckless, often terrifying plunge into unknown waters. You can't control love! What you don't understand, Diane, is that the human will does not follow a blind path. It does not seek, if I may speak in metaphor, false prophets. Do you, Diane, have knowledge of truth, of the truth that comes by seeking honesty from within? Could you give that of yourself to me - to anyone?" 'Oh, God,' he said to himself, thinking of the one woman he had once loved. 'Oh, she could see so deeply inside me, and I miss her so.'

"How could I know what you . . . I . . . don't understand you?" she said.

"I have to go now." Could I be so tired of living without her?

"Please, not yet, Sumner. May I ask you one question? Please?"

She could hear his breathing on the far side of the world. She could imagine him sitting, exasperated, eyes closed in acceptance of some distant, odious fate.

"Sumner?"

"Yes."

"Could you accept, not now, not today, but could you understand it if I told you that I was in love with you?"

"Yes."

"Sumner, is it beyond all comprehension that at some time in the future you might . . . Sumner, could you ever love me?"

He had known this question would come, yet he struggled with the reality of her need and his understanding of the infinite capacity of love to guide human understanding. He wanted to tell her no, that he could never love her. But he understood something very elemental. He had responded to having caused her pain, to awakening her need to love another human being, and this had puzzled him. As he listened to her voice, he only grew more puzzled. How many dimensions could love have?




The Writer and The Word (02)



"Sumner?"

"Are you willing to consider that you are asking me the wrong question?"

And with that amorphous thought hanging in the air, he broke the connection.

+

Diane Westhoven struggled with conflicting jolts of indecision that wracked her spirit.

What had he meant, asking the wrong question? I must call him back! What did he mean by that? Why did he . . .?

Why was "Could you ever love me?" the wrong question?

She sat for hours, looking at the water in the river as it receded from her.

Was it receding? Or was she falling?

She couldn't tell anymore.

Her telephone was ringing and she rushed to grab it, hoping it would be Sumner, that he would come to her rescue . . . but it was the Greenbaum girl. Could she come over?

Certainly. I'll be looking forward to seeing you . . . 

Why am I . . . so . . . lost? There were no more prayers to be said. She seemed to be falling toward some distant conclusion to her life.

+

British Airways flight 481 was on final approach, coming in low over Massachusetts Bay from the northeast. Angela White sat up now, looking out the window as the huge Boeing drifted in over the runway threshold and the main gears lightly touched down. The nose came down moments later, then the engines roared as reverse thrust was applied, and the spent feeling of a flight ended came over the passengers and crew as 481 taxied to Terminal E. The jet taxied and parked between airliners from France and Switzerland.

Angela was the first person off the plane, and she made her way through customs about as quickly as could be done these days, and she walked with butterflies dancing in her stomach out into the waiting area outside of the Custom's Hall. She walked ahead and could see - no one. Anxious, she walked ahead a few steps with uncertainty crowding out the anticipated greeting she had constructed in her mind's eye.

Then he was there beside her, and she hadn't the slightest clue how he had just popped up there right out of thin air. She stopped walking, and turned to look up at him with a puzzled look on her face. He had a slight smile bubbling away there, and he brought around a single white rose from behind his back and presented it to her.

"Miss White?" he said. "It is my miserable duty to inform you that you are my prisoner. You being British and all that nonsense, and it is the Forth of July, and well, after all, it is Boston! I'm afraid you'll have to come with me. Now, now, don't put up a fight!"

"Bloody hell, the Forth of July!? I'd forgotten completely about that. Oh, my! How are conditions in your Colonial jails?"

"You'll find out soon enough. And here's the really bad news, I'm afraid. We're having dinner with Dad."

"Oh, indeed! The plot thickens!"

He took up her carry-on in his hand, preferring to carry it rather than roll it. He walked with her out the sliding doors and over to a waiting Range Rover; the driver got out of the big black SUV and opened the back door as they approached. The driver was wearing a black suit, but he wasn't the chauffeur type; there was a more distinctly military demeanor to the man.

"Good evening, Miss White," was all he said, and then he took her carry-on from Sumner and placed it in the back of the vehicle.

They drove only a short distance from the airport, and did not take any of the new tunnels into the city. Angela had been to Logan many times, and had stayed at the Hyatt on the harbor more than once, and the driver headed that way now. But he drove on past it, curiously, and wound through a little industrial area until they came to a sign that said "Boston Harbor Marina"; at the sign, the black Rover went down into the parking lot. Sumner got out with the driver, and they talked for a moment outside the Rover. The driver nodded, then went around to get Angela's bag, while Sumner moved to open her door.

Sumner walked her down a ramp toward the few boats that were docked in the marina at the bottom of the ramp, the driver not far behind, and then they walked over to a small navy blue launch that waited by the fuel dock. There was a man in a white uniform in the launch, apparently waiting for them. He was talking on a hand-held radio.

"Is that your Dad?" Angela said. Pretty small boat, she thought.

"Nope, 'fraid not. That's Brian, and he's much too distinctive to be dear ole Dad!"

Sumner hopped into the little boat and helped Angela get aboard, then took the bag from the driver, who then cast off the lines holding the launch to the dock. 

Sumner took Angela's hand, and the man operating the launch - Brian - slipped the engine into gear and smoothly left the dock. They wound their way through the marina, then turned and entered the main ship channel. Brian turned to the right once they hit the channel, and downtown Boston was spread out before them like a vast tableau, along with about fifty thousand other boats milling about in the harbor, including the oldest boat in the U S Navy, the U.S.S. Constitution. Sumner explained that all of the boats were gathering for the annual Forth of July festivities, which included the Constitution's annual foray into the harbor, and that stunning spectacular of daring nautical prowess would be followed by a colossal fireworks display over the harbor as darkness fell. 

Angela looked on wide-eyed as the scale of the event unfolded before her. She held the single white rose to her face all the while.

The little launch slipped along smoothly through the crowd of boats and headed out toward the center of Boston Harbor. Soon it was apparent that they were headed toward one boat in particular.

Angela wasn't quite prepared mentally for what she saw. "Oh - my - God!" was all she managed to say.

She watched in awe as their little blue launch made for the side of a truly huge yacht, the length of which she guessed to be somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty feet long - maybe more - as she was no judge of such things. The hull was navy blue, but polished to a mirror bright sheen that looked almost like glass. The upper parts of the yacht were brilliant white set off by dazzling woodwork. There was a man standing on the deck waving down at them as they pulled up and alongside the yacht. The launch drifted to a smooth stop next to a boarding platform and the stairway that led up to the deck where the man stood.

"That's Dad," Sumner said.

"You weren't kidding about the PM, were you?" Angela asked hesitantly.

Sumner just stood there grinning.

+

Angela White walked up the gentle stairway that led up to Sumner's father standing on the deck above. As he came into view she saw a man perhaps in his late fifties, his hair pure silver, not too tall, and still very trim and muscular. She could immediately see the lineage in Sumner's face; they were almost clones of each other, simply separated by age. Thankfully, he wasn't dressed like a sea captain, either, but stood there in tan corduroys and white button down shirt, a navy blue cardigan sweater hanging loosely from his angular shoulders. He was not a big man, but she instantly saw that he was bigger than life.

"Dad, this is Miss Angela White. Angela, my father Bennett."

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Mr Welles."

"God in heaven, Sum. You weren't just kidding about those eyes, were you?" Angela White once again demonstrated her incredible ability to turn deep purple at the drop of a . . . hat? "Oh, goodness, Miss White, that was spectacularly ungentlemanly of me. Do forgive me. Let's get you out of this breeze, what say you, Sumner? You two will to be staying on-board tonight?" The way he had asked that - almost - seemed like a question, but not quite. They walked toward the rear of the yacht on the breezy covered side deck, then into the large enclosed room that overlooked the sea at the yacht's stern.

It was like walking into the living room of a finely appointed home, only bigger, Angela thought. The room was spare, yet elegant, fine teak and mahogany furniture on deep woolen dove gray carpet; yet all around was the harbor, sitting there in pristine proximity. The effect was powerful; the room appeared to float above the sea, yet somehow it felt part of its surroundings. And it was warm inside! Angela had not considered that Boston could be cool in July, and she had only brought the most casual of clothes with her - no sweater, no coat!

"Miss White, could I get you something to drink?" Bennett Welles said. He seemed remarkably at ease in these surroundings, and his voice made her feel genuinely welcome. She had studied him as they walked into the room; Bennett Welles was obviously an immensely powerful man, and he had arrived at that station in life where he no longer had to prove himself to others. He exuded confidence, to be sure, but she sensed genuine curiosity and he had the ability to listen with attentive empathy. What a rare old bird this was!

"Something warm, Mr Welles?" she asked. She was almost shivering!

"Miss White, I'd much rather you called me Ben, and how about a little coffee with a little something extra to take the chill off?"

"That would be wonderful, sir, and do call me Angela."

"Fine, fine. Lee! Come on in here." A short oriental man came into the room, obviously the yacht's steward. "Lee, would you fix this young lady an Irish coffee? Sum, how about you, that sound good? Fine! Lee, make it three, and we'll take them in here, please." He turned back to Angela and continued. "Miss White, perhaps you'd like to settle in down below, get unpacked. By the way, how long can you stay?"

"I'd planned to return this Sunday," she said, puzzled at his question. "Why?"

"Fine. Well, Sum, take her below, would you, and show her around. Lee will take a few minutes with the coffee, so take your time."

+

Sumner took Angela from the big room - the salon - where his father remained standing, looking at the harbor - and they walked forward through the dining room to the bridge, where two men in white uniform stood working on charts and going over notebooks as they kept an eye on the milling boats all around them. From the bridge, he took her to a stairway that led down to the lower deck. These stairs ended at a long narrow corridor that stretched fore and aft. Forward were the crews' quarters, and aft were his stateroom and his father's, as well as room for eight additional guests in four smaller staterooms. Sumner took Angela aft down the richly paneled corridor to the stateroom his father had wanted her to have and opened the door.

Her carry-on suitcase was already on a baggage stand by the foot of the bed; Sumner motioned her to enter and check out the stateroom. He remained outside the stateroom door. She entered, looked at the large double berth, the fine cabinetry, the huge window looking out on the sea, and walked into the private bathroom and shower. She came back out. "Sumner, it's really lovely. But . . . are you going to stand out there in the hall all day?"

"Angela, I didn't want to presume . . ."

Angela was taken aback by that. She simply wasn't used to gentlemen anymore, they seemed an endangered species in this era of hip-hop rappers and speedy greed merchants.

"Sumner, would you please come in, and do shut the door, hum?" He walked into the - her - room and shut the door almost completely, but not quite. She walked over to him and took both of his hands in hers, stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the lips. "I hope you know all this is a little overwhelming," she said, indicating the yacht and his father by spreading her hands and motioning all around. Then she met his gaze, looked at him standing there. "So, changed your mind yet? Want to take me back to the airport?"

"Dear God in Heaven! Angela, when I saw you walk out of customs I was stunned, I almost lost my balance."

"Sorry?" she asked, indicating with her voice that she wasn't sure if she had understood him correctly.

"I don't really know how to say this. When I saw you walk into that, well, oh God, how do I say this - you took my breath away. And I don't mean that in some metaphoric way . . . I mean I got light headed . . . you were so incredibly beautiful standing there; even now when I look at you I can't believe you're, that you're really here. And I can't believe how completely disoriented you make me . . . I can't even speak intelligibly anymore?!"

"I'm here, Sum, and I'm real. Are you really sure you want me here?"

"More than anything in the world. And you?"

She kissed him again. This time not so lightly. It was the answer he had dreamed of.

+

When they returned to the big aft salon, Sumner's father sat with a strikingly handsome older woman and another couple. Bennett Welles introduced Angela to his girlfriend Suzanne Collins, and to his secretary, Jean, and her husband Patrick. Lee brought in their coffees, and they took a seat back by the aft facing windows. The Sun was beginning to set behind the downtown skyscrapers, and the number of boats in the harbor was almost daunting in its variety and ever- shifting shape.

The Constitution was returning to it's berth under Bunker Hill, and boats full of merry-makers were now skewing about wildly, blowing all manner of horns and whistles, some folks shooting small fireworks from their little decks. Coast Guard and Harbor Patrol vessels were keeping people away from the barges where, presumably, the fireworks would be launched, but they were otherwise leaving everyone pretty much alone.

The launch Angela and Sumner had arrived on earlier was now dropping off several more guests, and just as quickly as it had arrived, it was off to bring more guests out to the yacht. Lee and another woman finished placing snacks and dips on the various little tables around the room. Yet another woman was attending the small bar at the forward end of the large salon.

Angela felt a bit self-conscious; she hadn't come prepared to socialize in this rarefied atmosphere, indeed, these were hardly the types she suspected she would ever socialize with. Too much money seemed to float around the room as Bennett's guests arrived, and though the people seemed - remarkably - casually dressed for the occasion, the sleek women were adorned in overwhelmingly expensive jewelry and the men oozed wealth with their Vacheron Constantine equipped wrists and bronzed complected Polo-shirt physiques. 

But things weren't as uptight as she'd first presumed. The men and women to a one all came over to Sumner and chatted amiably, Sumner introduced her to them all in turn, and they embraced her as a friend of the family - literally. Almost everyone on the yacht was, it seemed, part of the Welles clan. And Sumner was amazing, she thought. He stood beside her as he made introductions, telling his friends and family that Angela was "a very special friend" visiting from England. Everyone seemed to appreciate Sumner's emphasis on "special", and looked at her with heightened interest.

Angela had talked with some of the guests when Sumner had been pulled aside into private discussions, and everyone wanted to know where she and Sumner had met - how long they had know each other. Not one person raised an eyebrow when she had told them that this was really their very first date. One Madeleine Welles, a close cousin of Sumner's, filled Angela in on some of the blank spots that were emerging as this Welles family portrait was drawn into sharper relief. 

Sumner had always been, according to Madeleine, a very serious young man, and had rarely dated either in boarding school or at Harvard. Of course, Madeleine knew so little of him that she had not the slightest inkling that Sumner was a student there; she nodded understanding as these bits and pieces fell into place, and listened ever more intently.

Sumner would, Madeleine said, finish Harvard this fall, take the Spring off, then start Law School next year. His intentions were, indeed always had been for as long as anyone could remember, to join the State Department and spend his life in public service. His father was resigned to Sumner's career choice, but thought it a waste, and had made clear his wishes that Sumner should help out with family concerns after school.

Angela was more interested in Sumner's - well, social life, and steered Madeleine toward talking about Sumner's other out of school interests. And Madeleine knew exactly where to take that conversation. She had then carefully pulled Angela out of the stream of traffic, and told her the story about Sumner that she had to know, and this story was, Madeleine knew, the one that Sumner would never talk about.

Sumner had been in love before, but only once, Madeleine began. He had interned in a US Senators office over the summer after his second year at Harvard, and had fallen for one of the Senator's senior staff members very quickly, and deeply. She had been in her thirties, was very sophisticated, very brainy, and while not terribly beautiful by any means, she was a very cute and vivacious woman. He had continued seeing her after school resumed last fall, and everyone was sure that the relationship was going to become very serious. 

Madeleine grew pensive as this narrative progressed; perhaps she had reconsidered telling this story to Angela, was having second thoughts.

"What is her name, Madeleine?" asked Angela.

"Her name was Rebecca, Rebecca Dassault. And, I . . ."

"Her name 'was'?"

"She was diagnosed with breast cancer last fall, November, I think it was. Sumner took the winter term off, spent it with her in New York, at Sloan-Kettering. He was truly devoted to her."

"I take it she didn't make it?"

"No, she," and Madeleine seemed more upset as she thought about the incident, "she passed away in, I think it was March. Angela, Sumner and I have always been very close - more like brother and sister, really. I live in Manhattan, he stayed with me when he wasn't with her at the hospital. We talked. A lot." She paused, took a strong pull on her Martini, gathering strength. "Well, to make a long story short, I was very surprised to see him here tonight with you. I wasn't sure he was going to make it there, for a while. You must be a very special lady, indeed."

Angela seemed lost as the contours of this part of Sumner's life came to her. Sensing this, Madeleine leaned forward very close and took Angela's hand in hers as she whispered in her ear. 

"He really is the most special man, Angela. Good luck."

Angela wasn't sure why, but she leaned forward and hugged Sumner's cousin, thanked her for the trust she had shown.

So, she thought, he lost the woman he loved, and I lost my father. At about the same time.

'Oh my dear God in Heaven,' she thought.

+

As darkness fell, patriotic music began playing from a striking white tented structure on the south side of the harbor. Bennett Welles motioned his guests to move up onto the yacht's flying bridge deck, and the twenty five or so guests made their way into the chilly evening air. A Sousa March was winding down, and as the National Anthem began filling the air around the boats, fireworks arced into the air and exploded over the harbor.

Sumner and Angela walked to the forward edge of the deck. Angela made her way to the rail, and Sumner came up behind her, moved close to her, and put his hands on her shoulders. A cool breeze washed over the harbor, and Sumner felt Angela tremble as the cool air chilled her; he took off his jacket, placed it over her shoulders.

"Put your arms around me, Sumner," she said.

Her arms were crossed inside the draped coat; Sumner took his arms and he folded her into his embrace. They stood in silence, watching the fiery arcs wing into the sky, expand into the night like exploding stars, and dissipate on their fall from the sky into the waiting embrace of the sea. There was a pronounced height difference between Angela and Sumner; she came up to, barely, his shoulders. She tilted her head back as far as she dared, could just make out his face above hers. He was looking up into the sky.




The Writer and The Word (02)



He seemed like an eagle.

+

She turned around to face him, and she watched his eyes as the arcing lights of rockets reflected there. He was absorbed in the display, and so she just looked up at him with wonder in her heart. There was a cognitive resonance in the moment, a feeling that she knew him much better than mere time had yet allowed . . . that she had known him . . . perhaps for all time. It was a foolish thought, she knew, but the feeling grew within her so strongly, and so quickly, that it became overwhelming, and disconcerting.

Sumner had the impression of light flashing below him, and looked down to see reflections of fireworks in Angela's eyes. She was looking up at him; even in the star-dappled light of the festive sky he could make out the blue pools of her eyes. Time seemed to stop as he looked at her, the world dissolved around them into timeless mists, and he felt as though his mortal existence had suddenly been thrust into the vastness of space . . . all around him it was black, there was no corporeal reference to the sight other than the misty blaze of Angela White's pure alabaster skin, and the seductive luminance of her eyes . . .

. . . Eyes that sought reference in times dissolute journey, the dawning radiance of becoming at one with the awareness of destiny's simple call, these two hearts drifted toward the music of this misty-light, fused in nightsong that blossomed with their union. Lips seeking release from mortal restraint joined in their soul's ease - as time never holds true love in abeyance.

Sumner Welles held Angela White in his arms as the sky around them danced in frenzied expansion, as the air shook in the crack and roar of creation, and they held that moment to their heartfire, felt it grow.

He took her face in his hands and lowered his mouth to hers. In the simple purity of that moment, with the noble truth of that kiss, Sumner Welles and Angela White fell - truly, madly, and deeply - in love.

+

Bennett Welles, with his truest love Suzanne by his side, looked at his son as he kissed Angela, and he sighed the burning song of a parent's heartfelt relief. He felt a hand slide in his and turned to see his sister's daughter Madeleine standing there as well, looking at Sumner and Angela.

"That's just about the most Goddamned beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life," Bennett Welles said. 

"Life goes on, Uncle Ben."

"Perhaps," he said, "but I wasn't so sure a month ago."

It had been a troubled Spring for the father as he had watched his son's heart breaking.

+

Sumner and Bennett Welles stood by the stairway that led to the launch waiting below and said their goodbyes to friends and family after the fireworks display had ended, then they had repaired to the great aft salon and joined Suzanne, Madeleine, and Angela. They were sitting there in the dark, talking away at who knows what. The yacht was underway, steaming out the main ship channel and headed toward Massachusetts Bay and thence on to Northeast Harbor on Mount Desert Island, which was on the Maine Coast about 175 miles to the northeast. The seas were calm, and the almost full Moon was just beginning to show above the eastern horizon.

As the women were talking, and seemed to be enjoying themselves, Bennett took his son aside near the entrance to the salon, and put his arm around his shoulder.

"She seems one helluva young lady, Sum. I don't know what you feel about her, but she really impressed everyone here tonight. I thought you should know that."

"Thanks, Dad. There really is something very odd about her, you know?"

"Odd?"

"Not odd like bad, Dad. Odd like there's some really profound connection there. I'm not sure I can explain it. But she's becoming like the air that I breathe, I'm not sure I could survive without her."

"Well, Sum, take it slow," concern suddenly filling his heart. "If it's real, let it happen, but don't force it. On the other hand, I wouldn't let that girl get away from me for all the tea in China. I . . . well, she's one in a million, son."

Angela was walking their way, and doing so quite well despite the mild motion of the boat.

"Well, there you are," she said as she joined them.

"Miss White, you must be exhausted. I can never handle jet lag, myself, though Sum here does better than I do. Hell, you've only been back five days, right Sumner?"

But Sumner was lost now, looking down at Angela and oblivious to the world. Angela was holding back a monster sized yawn, and her eyes were looking a little red.

"Say, Sum, you'd better get her down to her stateroom. We'll be up for a while if you want to join us." He tried to keep the irony out of his voice.

+

Sumner led the way down to the lower deck and held Angela's hand all the way. He opened the door and turned on the light, then stood aside and let her enter the room. He remained in the narrow little corridor as she entered the room, then she turned around and looked at the room in surprise.

It was full of white roses.

Angela felt her heart soaring. She felt an almost mythical presence in the room - a fleeting glimpse of ancient music in the air, and she turned to see Sumner - what? - standing in the corridor?

"Please don't make me ask, Sum," she said. "I think we moved way beyond that tonight."

Sumner walked into the little room, and shut the door behind him. 

He flipped off the light switch, casting the room into darkness. He walked over to the large portlight and pulled the curtain back, letting pure moonlight flood into the room. He turned to see her standing there, her blouse now off, and her breasts visible in the silver glow. He walked over to the bed, and he lay down there, never taking his eyes off of her. She reached around behind her waist and unzipped her skirt, letting it fall to the floor. She took up Sumner's jacket and draped it over her shoulders, then laid down beside him on the bed. He wrapped her in his arms and stroked her hair gently, rubbed the skin over her temples with his thumbs in gentle little circles. He kissed her forehead softly several times as he rubbed her head, and he listened to her breathing as it deepened. She was drifting off to sleep so very quickly. 

He held her as she fell asleep, and then, as sleep came for him, he said very sweetly, in just the barest whisper of a sigh, "Oh, Angela, I think I love you . . ."

He thought he saw a smile come to her face, laying there in the moonlight, as sleep came for him.

+

Just a few minutes before midnight that Friday night, Nancy Greenbaum rode the elevator up to Diane Westhoven's place, which was, it turned out, the entire 21st floor of a luxury condominium building overlooking the River Charles. She was looking quite the Goth-chic tonight in her short black vinyl skirt and leather bra over a torn black fishnet body-stocking. She had decided to buy some black thigh high boots, the very high spiky heels adding a decidedly slutty look to her ensemble, after reading about several lesbian S & M encounters Diane's alter-ego had fashioned in many of her books. 

As the elevator hissed to a stop, she checked the blood-red lipstick in her reflection on the inside of the elevator door, then walked out into the private foyer that was Diane's 'door'. She went over plots and scenes in Westhoven's sordidly predictable little stories, walking through in her mind the steps she had worked out for her seduction. And ultimate betrayal. 'Oh, sweet irony,' she thought.

She rang the bell and waited. And rang the bell again.

She tried the door, and it slid open as she pushed on it without having turned the doorknob. She walked into the entry hall and called out Diane's name; she thought she heard something and proceeded into the living room. 

Diane Westhoven was lying face down on the pure white carpet in a flame red dress; two very red pools of blood were spreading from her wrists, and a little blade-like razor sat jack-knifed on it's side a few feet away from her.

Nancy ran to her side, checked for a carotid pulse, and found one - weak but still steady. She ran into the kitchen and dialed 9-1-1, and thankfully got the operator almost immediately. She told the operator what the situation was, and the operator told her to put pressure on the wounds. Help would be there in a few minutes, Nancy heard. She hung up the phone and found some dish towels, and ran back to Diane's side. 

Then Nancy saw the pills.

Vicodin and Percocet. Two bottles laying on the table, a few pills still sitting on the tabletop inertly, a two-thirds empty bottle of some rank Mexican Tequila standing there like an insinuation. Nancy roughly turned Diane over onto her back and tied one towel around the right wrist - which wasn't cut too deeply - and then moved to Diane's left wrist. This cut had found it's mark; Diane had cut not across the wrist, but up the wrist, severing a small artery and a tendon, and the blood flow was more aggressive here. Nancy tied off this wound as best she could, and with another towel tied off the upper arm tightly, hoping that she could slow the blood loss. She heard an ambulance on the street far below, and caressed Diane's face, telling her that help was on it's way.

Diane's eyes fluttered a bit, then opened. Her eyes rolled back, and Nancy was horrified as Diane started to vomit. She knew the danger here, having been raised by two physicians, and swung Diane onto her side and let the vomitus flow out onto the carpet. Nancy stuck two fingers into Diane's mouth and swept the muck out, keeping her airway clear. She moved to keep pressure on the wound.

"God, hurry up you guys!" she invoked, wanting the paramedics to get here and help while they still could.

More vomit flowed out of Diane's mouth, not convulsively, but in a slow ooze. She swept the stuff clear, and heard the elevator door opening.

"In here!" she yelled. Two paramedics and three firemen ran into the room and went to work. She moved out of their way, and did the only thing she knew to do. She went back into the kitchen and got on the phone. She called her father.

+

Sumner Welles woke in the middle of the night.

He felt as though he'd had a nightmare, but couldn't remember having had one. He sat up in bed, then remembered where he was.

She was lying there peacefully, her face still awash in moonglow, and as he took in the form of her beauty he felt that tremor in his chest again, felt that light-headed swoon take command of his awareness for a moment. He was still in his shirt and slacks, indeed, his shoes were still on!

Suddenly she turned over, and was instantly awake.

"Are you alright, Sumner?"

He moved around to her side and took her hand in his and brought it to his mouth. He kissed her hand. Softly. Then he looked up into her eyes again, and felt his hold on reality slipping away as her beauty hammered away at his soul. 

"Sum, what is it, darling?"

His voice failed him at first, then came back to him in form somewhere between a whisper and a pubescent tremor. "I can't help thinking that you're going to find this foolish, but Angela, I think I love you. I don't know what to say, I, what's happening to me."

"Sumner, do you have to know what's happening? Can't we just accept your feelings?" She held his eyes in hers, loving what she saw. "Can you trust your feelings?" She asked; even in the dim glow she could see his face reflecting the soft light of her love, could make out the form of her feelings plainly on his face. She moved her hand to his face, to his cheek, and she stroked his face softly. "You don't have to worry, Sumner. I'm not going to hurt you, not tonight, not ever. And do you know why?"

His face was lost in her caress, though he was aware of her voice, her question. "Please, Angela, please . . ." he said.

"Because I know, Sumner, I know how I feel. I feel like nothing I've ever experienced before, and I know what it is. I am completely in love with you."

"You are?" 'How - why . . .'

"I think I'm probably as shocked about this as you are, Sum, but, yes, there it is. I've known you less than a day, yet I feel like I've known you forever. And I know I want to be with you, forever."

"Are you . . . sure?" He seemed to be drifting on currents of moonbeams, lost in the chance dancing of pure light.

"Oh, yes."

"Would you . . ."

"Sum, lets take things one step at a time, O.K.?"

"Would you marry me, Angela?"

She paused a moment, looked him directly in the eye. "If that's what you want, Sum, what you really want, then yes, I will. But Sum, we can wait a day or so, at least, before we talk about this again. Please? Can we just talk and listen to each other for a day or so?"

"I know I must seem a childish dolt, Angela, but . . ."

"But maybe you're tired . . . confused . . . and your life has been a little disjointed of late."

"Angela, what did you and Madeleine talk about?"

"Oh, Sumner, don't be upset with her. We talked about you, what else? We talked about what you're plans are after school, about interning in Washington, and about Rebecca. You know, Madeleine loves you very much. If she wasn't your cousin, I'd be very jealous."

Sumner looked off in unfocused lethargy the instant Angela mentioned Rebecca's name; he seemed to drift out of context into that immaterial state that had claimed him after Rebecca's death, and to Angela his pain was palpable. 'He'll be lucky to ever love anyone again,' she thought. Then something struck her like a thunderclap . . .

"When did she pass away, Sumner?"

"Huh, what?"

"When did Rebecca pass away?"

"Why do you . . ."

"Sum, what was the date she passed?"

"The thirtieth, the thirtieth of March. Why do . . ." he started to ask, but stopped when he saw her expression. Even in the latent moonlight he could see a marked change in her state of mind.

"Sum, what time of day, what time did she pass away?"

He didn't understand the question, but after watching Angela's face he knew enough to follow her lead, go with her line of questioning. "Seven past eleven in the morning."

Angela placed her head in Sumner's lap and started crying softly. 'Oh my God.' she said softly, almost to herself, 'they died at almost exactly the same time, the very same day . . ." She tensed and held her knees to her chest and took a deep breath, but the forces colliding in the little stateroom felt apocalyptic - she felt as though the air in her chest was being pushed out by a crushing weight.

"Oh, Sumner . . ." she exhaled his name between little racking streams of awareness. "My father died that afternoon, a little after four that day . . ."

Sumner felt as though some other force had entered the room as her words penetrated his gloom. "Your father?" He did the math. The two had died almost simultaneously.

Angela was drifting along in her own currents of confused awareness, trying to piece together the disconcerting bits of information that had come crashing together during the past several hours. Desperately seeking the flash of insight that would bring some order to the confused landscape, she now found herself in limbo - unable to intuit the barest shred of meaning within the inner sanctum of these events.

"Your father, and Rebecca, passed away at the same time?"

"Sum, this can't be random, you and I, coming together. Not with, not with these deaths, oh, no, oh, no, this can't be. I don't really believe in these things, not like this . . ."

"Not like what, Angela? What are you getting at?"

"That they passed away, and in their passing it was ordained that you and I would meet."

Sumner was silent for a while, but he held Angela to his breast, ran his fingers through her hair with his eyes closed to the world of external reality. He felt himself reaching out to Angela and Rebecca at the same time - in the same plane of being. He was in the room with Angela in a very real sense, but something else was there in this space, as well. 

"Tell me about your father?"

Angela drifted back into the awareness of his question. She took her time with it - wanted to come to terms with her memory of life and death so specifically intertwined. 

"He was a pilot, for BA, for all of his adult life. He first flew 707s, the 747s, and he retired a Captain about three years ago. Mum left him - oh - almost fifteen years ago. She lives in Auckland now. Any rate, he retired from active flight duties, but remained a staff instructor at BA training pilots for many of the Asian carriers, you know, like Singapore and Japan Airlines. He got very ill a little over a year ago, undiagnosed prostrate cancer that had spread into his spine, and the disease spread painfully and quickly until it had raped him of his joy of living life in such, well, extreme ways."

"So, I know this is a stupid question, but you two were close?"

"Oh good lord yes! Never any two fathers and daughters closer. After Mum took off - I wasn't quite ten yet - well, Mum didn't want to take me to New Zealand. And Dad was always off flying and on lay-overs. So he put in for the Heathrow to North America runs, the shorter runs, so he could have more time at home with me. His sister stayed at the house with me most times - she was the best friend I could have had given the circumstances. But Dad, we became fantastically close - I dare say more friends as time went on - but he was always my Dad. Always the one I went to when I had a problem. And then he was sick, and he had the problem, and he relied on me, and we became even closer still."

"What about his sister, are you still close?"

"She passed away about five years ago, right before I started flying . . . oh, that's right, you probably don't know I was a flight attendant myself for a few years, until Dad took ill. Dad found a new lady friend after I started flying, but she left as soon as he retired, though I suspect he was happy at the way that turned out."

"So, what do you think about this. Coincidence? Do things always happen for a reason?"

"I don't suspect I'll ever be bright enough to figure that out, Sum, but I don't think it's something I feel I can ignore. But, you know, I really don't have a problem saying that things happen for a reason. I know that implies a huge role for divine providence, but I'm still pretty comfortable with the possibility. Sum? What about you?"

"I only know that I loved Rebecca in a very pure way. She was a beautiful woman in her way, and very intelligent, but most of all she was a brave soul. She made her way in a man's world, and ended up doing a better job on the Hill than just about anyone there ever did. She was one in a million. And . . . She knew how hard her passing was going to be for me; which I guess was why she told me she would look after me after she had moved on. But, like, that's all nonsense, right?" 'Or is it?' he thought. "I'm really not religious at all, it makes me uncomfortable. Even now."

"I still talk to Dad, Sum. Sometimes I think he's with me everywhere I go, watching over me. Is that any different than Rebecca telling you she'd look after you?"

"Angela, all of this is - in a way - overshadowing something very basic, very elemental. Whatever I felt for Rebecca, it was important, I could never forget her, and don't want to forget her. But I know I love you, I knew it the very second you looked up at me at Heathrow. Whatever it is - coincidence, destiny, karma - whatever drove these events to the fore of our consciousness, I don't want them to detract from what I feel for you . . .

". . . And I know that we can't ignore these events, these two people having moved on together . . . I think I can accept that their passing might mean something beyond the mere fact of the matter. Maybe these events are tied to us. But I doubt we'll ever know the truth of that, not without descending into pure mysticism. But Angela, if you want to search for greater meanings to these people's passing, I'd just like to be with you while you're looking, O.K.?"




The Writer and The Word (02)



Angela had been lying there, listening to his voice, listening to the possibilities of coincidence and . . .

There was a gentle knock on the stateroom door.

+

"Sum?" It was his Dad's voice.

"Yeah, Dad, be there in a minute."

"Say, Sum, meet me up on the bridge, O.K.? ASAP."

If Angela had recognized some tension in Bennett Welles' voice, Sumner heard outright alarm. "Angela, better let me go up and find out what's up . . ."

"Do you think he's mad about you being in here with . . ."

"Good God, no. That was his maintaining his cool while something bad has happened voice. That means something truly bad has happened. Let me see what's up, and I'll be right back down."

"Should I get dressed?"

"If we need you up there I'll call down on the intercom . . . the telephone will ring," he said, pointing to the phone on the bedside table. He walked over to the door, and turned to look at her. "Wherever you want to go, Angela, I want to be there beside you. Alright?"

She turned to look at him, but he had already left the room.

+

"Sum, an internist at Mass Gen called about twenty minutes ago, a Dr Marc Greenbaum. His daughter had called him at home, she says she knows you, was in Scotland with you last month. She was with another girl, I don't know who, I think he said Westhoven, but apparently this Westhoven girl tried to commit suicide . . . Sum?"

Sumner Welles had gone white at the mere mention of Diane Westhoven and suicide in the same sentence.

"Sumner, what going on here, is it anything I need to be aware of? Do I need to wake up some lawyers?"

Sumner pulled himself back together. "Can we get a hold of this Dr Greenbaum? I need to talk to him, or better yet, his daughter." 

The ship's Captain was busy on the helm, but his mate was up on the bridge, and started to make the call when Mr Welles looked at him and nodded.

"So, Sum, what's this all about?"

He told his father what he knew. He recounted meeting this Westhoven woman on the flight home last week, what had happened and what he'd said to her afterwards. He went over the telephone call today, yesterday, he corrected himself, and her declaration of love. He went over the conversation he'd had with her again in his mind to think if he'd forgotten something.

"Diane Westhoven, huh? The writer? Well, I'll be. We publish her stuff, you know, through Odyssey Books. Well, I'm gonna call Marshall and get him onto this, just in case."

"Dad, I don't think that'll be necessary."

"Sum, you can't just 'think' when something like this happens, you have to anticipate. You have to understand that maybe this Greenbaum girl or maybe Westhoven's agent will get a lawyer outta bed tonight, and the press will get a hold of things and blow them out of proportion. You may not know what reporters and lawyers will do to this, but I have a pretty fair idea. So, why don't you let me do the thinking for a while, O.K.?"

Sumner nodded his head. He wasn't thinking clearly, he knew.

The ship's First Mate, Brian, interrupted, informing Mr Welles that he had Dr Greenbaum on the SatPhone.

"You take it Sum, and Brian, record the call." The First Mate hit a red button and a light on the SatComm panel lit up, indicating that the call was being recorded.

"Dr Greenbaum, Sumner Welles here. Can you tell me what happened tonight?" He listened for a few minutes as the Internist talked, only interjecting now and then to indicate that he understood or heard something. "Alright, if Nancy is there, may I talk to her. Aha, yes well, thank you very much, sir, and please call back out here if there is any news we need to be apprised of." Pause. "Hello, Nancy? Are you alright? Can you tell me what's going on? How do you know Miss Westhoven? Aha. You did what? Whoa-whoa, Nance, not on an open line, O.K.? Ah, just stay there with your Dad, will you? I'll try to make it there in an hour or so. Alright, you just stay put, O.K., and I'll be there as soon as I can. Alright. Bye."

His Dad had been listening in on headphones, and had nodded when Sumner stopped the girl from talking on the open line, then snapped his fingers to the mate and whirled fingers over his head indicating that they were going to need one of the company helicopters out at the yacht ASAP. When Sumner broke off the connection, he asked the question.

"What about Angela, what do you want me to tell her?"

"You don't need to say a thing, Dad. I'm not going to keep anything, not one thing, ever, from her. And she's going with me."

His Dad shook his head and grinned. "Hell, Sum, y'all set a date yet, anything I need to know?"

"If she'll have me, Dad, if she'll have me. That's all I can say. But I asked her."

"O.K., Sum."

"Sir, the helicopter will be here in about fifteen, and flight plan back to Mass Gen is approved by FSS."

"Thanks, Brian." Bennett Welles turned to look at his son. He wasn't there.

+

The Bell Longranger touched down on the yacht's aft helipad a little after two in the morning. Sumner and Angela hopped on board as soon as it had settled on the pad, and Brian shut and latched the door behind them. The helicopter lifted off into the air behind the yacht, then spun in the air toward the southwest, and sped back toward the loom of lights cast by the mass of Boston. Sumner had put on headsets when he entered, and he put another pair on Angela's head. He flipped on the intercom, and he continued to tell her about Diane Westhoven's attempted seduction on flight 481. 

He had filled her in on events up to his leaving the flight once it had landed in Boston last Sunday while still in her stateroom; he continued now telling her about Westhoven's call to him yesterday morning. He bluntly told Angela about Westhoven's declaration that she was lost without him, and that she thought she loved him.

"I guess Dad thinks she's off her rocker, but I'm not so sure that is even remotely close to what the problem is. I think our talk must have uncovered a really raw nerve, and rather than try to get her help, I wanted to lead her to wanting to get help on her own. I had no idea she was in so much trouble. And this stuff with Nancy . . ."

Angela took his hand, held it tightly. She had been in all manner of jet aircraft before, but never in a helicopter, and never at low altitude at night over the ocean. It was almost pitch black outside; the moon was high overhead now, but behind thick cloud cover, and the sea was a featureless black void. Angela listened as carefully as she could, but the vertiginous streaking flight toward the city was disconcerting, and she felt as if she might get airsick. The lights of Boston's northern suburbs occasionally winked by as the helicopter continued toward downtown and Massachusetts General Hospital.

"Sumner, you can't take responsibility for her actions; she made a choice to seduce you, made a choice to call you, made a choice to back you into a corner. You called her bluff when she tried to make her actions into a game - a game she alone decides the rules of, by the way - and she can be the only victor. Don't let her suck you into her drama, not now."

The lights of the city grew rapidly now, and Angela grew more comfortable with each passing second. "Sumner, she made her choices. You've got to make one now. Help your friend Nancy, if you can, but be very careful about even thinking you can assume any responsibility for that woman's actions. You must know better on one level, but obviously her reactions affected you, perhaps be design, perhaps spontaneously, but you're not thinking clearly right now. I'll be with you, and let me know if I can help."

The helicopter was making adjustments to avoid airspace around Logan airport, but continued to bore in on the north side of downtown, then along Starrow Drive and the river. The pilot threw the Bell into a steep banking turn to the left over the river and leveled out near the Science Museum, took the bird on in toward the hospital's heliport, and put it down squarely on the pad.

Sumner opened the door and stepped out, then helped Angela out. They moved off the pad in the direction indicated by the men attending the landing, and went into the hospital.

Nancy Greenbaum was waiting just inside the door.

Sumner thought she looked pale, almost shocky.

And what the hell was with the Gothic street-slut outfit?

+

As Sumner listened to Nancy tell her tale of wanting to give the Westhoven woman a taste of her own medicine, of planning to seduce and betray her, he felt a dread fascination when he thought of how all of these two women had entered his orbit, and each spun out of control as they had tried to control him.

And yet here was Angela, he thought, the one who not only hadn't wanted to control him, but had in fact almost run from his grasp.

Was life ever really so simple.

+

Diane Westhoven had just been transfused her second unit of O negative blood; two of Boston's finest vascular surgeons worked rapidly to repair the wounds deep in her forearm - under the overwhelmingly bad odds of doing surgery on a patient who had overdosed on painkillers and Tequila. 

Her blood pressure was falling again - though more rapidly now, and an unsettling arrhythmia began. Suddenly the EKG went flat and alarms rang out; the anesthesiologist began to administer drugs as the surgeons went to support basic cardiac function.

"We're losing her," the anesthesiologist called out.

The surgeons placed defibrillator paddles on Diane Westhoven's chest and shocked her.

And shocked her again.

The readouts on the EKG remained flat.



The Writer and The Word (03)



In the hours, then days, after Diane Westhoven's attempted suicide, all of the characters in our little drama underwent profound changes as their role in her near demise became increasingly clear, indeed, became profoundly evident. No one, not even poor Angela White, escaped the bouts of self-examination, and self-recriminations, that followed. And no one contributed to these outpourings of doubt and retribution more than Nancy Greenbaum.

In the immediate aftermath of Diane's emergency surgery at Mass General, it was learned that the vascular surgeons' attempts to save her blade-ravaged left arm had failed. The exigent nature of the surgery, coupled with repeated episodes of near total cardiac failure brought on by narcotic overdose, had conspired to forestall efforts to save her left arm, and it had been amputated just above the elbow. Further, it was not known whether Diane had suffered a small stroke during surgery, or if the overdose and surgery had in some way compromised her ability to talk. When neither option bore medical scrutiny, psychiatrists added that malady to the retinue of problems to be sorted out. They were going to have their hands very, very full.

+

Even as surgeons worked through that night to save Diane Westhoven's life, Nancy Greenbaum had found herself in the center of an emotional hurricane. She had no way to gauge the impact of her efforts to unsettle Diane emotionally other than by the evidence before her: she had been utterly and devastatingly successful. As best as she could reconstruct events in her own mind, Diane had been completely demoralized by Sumner Welles' rejection and consequent verbal assault, then she, Nancy, had administered the coup d gras by taking a fundamentally heterosexual female already under extreme emotional duress down the long and winding road of a profoundly disconcerting homosexual encounter. 

Sociologist C Wright Mills introduced the term 'anomie' to describe most exactly what had subsequently subverted Diane Westhoven's moral and emotional world. You might find it more meaningful to consider that in the aftermath of the week's varied emotional upheavals, Diane had simply lost the will to live. In the midst of these extraordinarily powerful and contradictory emotional impulses, she had then shut down emotionally. Her only attempt to secure help, appealing to Sumner Welles' sense of honor and propriety - in a way, appealing to the possibility of resurrecting some viable frame of emotional reference by declaring her love for him - had been met by Sumner's inchoate question about 'not asking the right question'. At that exact moment in time, lost in the shattered wake of the telephone conversation that seemed so very full of 'might have beens', Diane Westhoven began her fateful slide into 'anomie'. That Nancy had called not long after, as has been mentioned, served only to make Diane's vertiginous descent all the more rapid. But I don't want to get to far ahead of myself, so please bare with . . .

In a world where other people's words and actions became - however well or ill intentioned they might have been - the determinant of an emotional landscape that Diane best described as 'Lost', she found her self battered by fathomless seas of such complete unfamiliarity that she had simply lost shape - she had unraveled as her external references dissolved into shadowy fogs of forsaken hope. With no valid emotional frame of reference surviving, Sumner's words and Nancy's actions became a kaleidoscope of distraction that only served to interfere with the quiet spiral of her descent into the easy mists of ambivalence. Without the will to live, Diane was no longer capable of anger, and even the thought of love came to her as the hollow echo of a painful joke she had played on herself. This hollow echo grew into an evil laughter as that fateful day had turned to night.

+

Sitting on the floor above the surgical suites, Sumner Welles and Angela White listened in abject horror as Nancy described her anger at Diane Westhoven, and the consequent decision to attack Diane psycho-sexually as payment in kind for Diane's manipulative - and men-spirited - seduction of Sumner. Both Sumner and Angela deduced that Nancy had been emotionally conjoined to Sumner, perhaps on their walk in Scotland, or in their conversation on flight 481 after Sumner's ebullient conversation with Angela, but in the end that really didn't matter. What did matter was that in spite of a seemingly noble sentiment - the desire the protect someone she thought she loved - Nancy Greenbaum had become a dangerous predator. 

Nancy's father had listened to his daughter's retelling of the week's events with a his parental horror in full conflict with his sense of professional detachment. He had no idea his Nancy had been flung into homosexual encounters with her high school teachers, her mentors, and he had no way to ascertain if or to what degree these affairs had warped her personality. Looking at the evidence before him, he knew that his daughter was severely burdened by the knowledge that what she had done to Diane Westhoven was profoundly wrong, and she was struggling with the idea that she was capable of doing such a thing at all. What Dr Greenbaum did know, and know professionally, was that his daughter was going to need a lot of help to get through all of the guilt and anger that was headed her way like a runaway freight train.

+

Sumner and Angela were having Sunday Brunch at the Four Seasons, but they were unusually quiet. Eggs and Champagne really did not seem a fit antidote to the emotional and medical carnage they had both witnessed over the past thirty hours; they were plainly exhausted and the emotional euphoria of new found love had vanished into unforeseen fogs just as surely as Diane's will to live had. Angela found it difficult to even make eye contact with Sumner - so complete was her emotional befuddlement. She had no way to gauge his role in these events; whether he was indeed an innocent bystander to events or a more active instigator remained to be seen. She simply did not know Sumner well enough to make that leap of faith.

Sumner, for his part, seemed to take things in stride. Perhaps he had watched people fall under his influence all his life; perhaps even watched equally dreadful consequences unfold in an amorphous polyglot of human greed. That was, he knew, a very real consequence of wealth: people threw themselves at you all the time, offered you their loyalty, and for no other reason than the wealth and status that might be bestowed upon them through you, their newfound benefactor. Most people would find Sumner's feelings jaded, but then again, most people aren't raised by Swiss nannies on forty million dollar Long Island and Cape Cod estates. Sumner's perspective might be just a bit different that yours or mine, anyway, so don't jump to conclusions just yet.

An astute reader such as yourself might be asking about now - aha, there has been no mention of Sumner's other parent, his mother - what's up with that? We have been able to infer from the few conversations between Sumner and his father that we have been privy to that they are close, and that they each love and respect one another. We also know that Sumner has only recently dealt with the passing of his first real love, and that he was devastated by the event . . . so much so that his cousin Madeleine even thought to mention to Angela that she had been concerned enough for him - that she had actually been afraid - Sumner might do something.

So what might Sumner have done? Or had he yet to do?

Of course, these weren't the thoughts Angela had as she sat there in the Four Seasons eating Eggs Sardou and sipping champagne. She wasn't thinking that Sumner was a little unstable, that he had fallen for her much too quickly, and that he had caused the near suicide of a famous author with a verbal assault on an airplane. She was not thinking about how charming he had been to her, about the romantic sequence of events on the Welles' family yacht, about his recently deceased one true love and the passing of her own father. No, indeed not, for she was looking across the room at a young First Officer she knew from her Flight Attendant days with BA, and she liked what she saw.

+

So, on a dismal Sunday afternoon, Sumner was dropping off Angela White at Logan's Terminal E, and he was in a deep blue funk. As the morning had drifted into afternoon Sumner watched as Angela had grown increasingly distant, so much so that by the time he took her to Logan he was not surprised that she wanted him to just drop her off curbside. He thought the cause so lost he hadn't even put up a fight.

Before Angela had walked off, she had thanked him for an interesting - interesting! - weekend. Brian had taken him back over to Cambridge, and he had sulked his way gloomily back to his dormitory. A very uncharacteristic Sumner Welles performance, indeed.

He had showered and shaved and thought briefly about taking a nap, then given up on the idea as hopeless and a waste of time. He walked over to the Harvard Square T Station and rode in on the Red Line to the Mass General stop, and made his way over to the hospital annex where Diane Westhoven was now residing. He made his way to the information kiosk and was informed Ms Westhoven was allowed no visitors at this time. Was he surprised? Indeed, no, he wasn't.

He tried to call Dr Greenbaum but was greeted by the Good Doctor's answering service; 'No, he didn't wish to leave a message . . .' and he informed the anonymous voice he would try later. He walked out of the hospital to the pedestrian overpass and walked along the Charles for a long while, occasionally looking up as rowers or sailboats drifted by in the subdued early evening light.

He had never felt so alone in his life.

+

Angela White was - if this was indeed possible - in an even deeper funk than Sumner. She fumed at herself for the miserable manner she had treated him, for the failing of her compassion at such a crucial time in her life and his. She thought about calling his cell phone, thought about apologizing to him. She wondered what that would mean. Was she really sorry, had she misjudged him in some truly unfair way? Was he truly an innocent caught between two fundamentally unbalanced and hysterical women, or had he contributed to the awful chain of events that had led the Westhoven women to the brink? She was really at a loss for words. Hadn't she counseled him to not be too quick assigning blame or taking undue responsibility? Was she being a hypocrite, or merely self-protective?

And the more important question came to her . . . If, as she now suspected, Sumner Welles was an innocent caught up in very unfortunate circumstances well and truly beyond his control, was she being too cautious? Did he deserve such judgement and implicit condemnation from someone he claimed to love, given that only hours before Angela was sure she loved him, as well? And had she not as much as told him so? Was she really so shallow and self-effacing?

Angela looked for a telephone to call Sumner with, even as she heard the final boarding call for her flight home to London. Failing that, she would call Brian.

+

As Sumner walked along the river's edge he heard his telephone buzzing away in his pocket. He took it out and looked at the display, saw that it was Dr Greenbaum on the line, and he took the call. 

Dr Greenbaum filled Sumner in on events that had passed during the day. Diane had regained some semblance of consciousness and had talked to a psychiatrist during the afternoon. She had barely reacted to news of losing her left arm. She had, in fact, only inquired about two people - Sumner and Nancy - and had wanted to know if they knew of her suicide attempt.

Dr Greenbaum and the shrinks now thought it might be a good idea if Sumner came over and made a brief appearance. They were cognizant of the risk, but thought the benefits of a positive encounter might outweigh the risks of a negative confrontation. Did Sumner understand?

Yes, Sumner understood. He told Greenbaum he would be there in a few minutes. Before he hung up, he inquired about Nancy. Dr Greenbaum advised he would fill him in when he arrived. Sumner put away his phone without looking at it, without noticing he had missed one call.

+

Nancy had been, Dr Greenbaum told Sumner, voluntarily committed earlier that afternoon after she had voiced some apparently very self-destructive remarks during a brief interview with the on-call house psychiatrist. Sumner noticed the very steely - almost robotic demeanor of the man, and felt quite bad for him. A Dr Susan Katz had arrived, introduced herself as Diane's attending psychiatrist, and filled Sumner in of the somewhat delicate nature of her condition and their request of him. Namely, they wanted Sumner to go in and talk to her about anything positive he could think of, try to engage her in some meaningful conversation without agitating her. They asked him to make sure he turned off his cell phone, then took him to her room.

+

Diane was in restraints when he entered the room; her one good arm was attached to the bed frame by a single nylon strap, as were her legs. Her left arm was tented, hidden from casual view. There were IV lines in her chest, under her left collar bone. A catheter bag about half full of deep reddish brown urine hung near the foot of the bed; hourly urine output was logged on a hanging clipboard near the bag. Diane's head was turned away; she was looking out the room's only (barred) window toward some dreary soot covered brick wall about thirty feet away, and she appeared almost catatonic.

Sumner walked in, looked at Diane Westhoven, and he began to cry in a way he scarcely thought possible. He thought of her lying on flight 481 exactly one week ago in the sprawling first class seat, thought of the overt sexuality of the woman, her mesmerizing legs, and how tantalized he had felt in some faraway recess of his mind as she had begun her assault on him. He knew he had wanted her, he knew it then, and it was amazing to him that he thought he felt that way now. He knew what he wanted to say, was even sure he knew how to say it, but her stony distant silence was almost intimidating, and he felt unsure how to proceed. Everything felt questionable in the frame of reference that the hospital room presented . . .

Then Diane Westhoven turned to him. In a clear voice she simply told him to "Please go."

"I'm not sure I can yet, Diane. Would you please listen to me for a minute?"

She simply turned her head away from him. She seemed ashamed, which surprised Sumner.

He took a chair and moved to her side, not blocking her view out the window, but easily within her field of vision. He put his hand on top of her restrained wrist, atop the bandage there, and he asked her to listen carefully, that what he had to say was important.

"Diane? You asked me if it would ever be possible for me to love you. Do you remember; I asked you to consider that you might not be asking the right question? Do you remember that, Diane?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes," she said again in a voice even fainter than a whisper.

"I was wondering, Diane, had you ever considered that I might already, in some way you might not have considered, that I might love you? Even right this very moment?"

He heard tears coming up from within some shattered core deep inside Diane's soul; these tears seemed to cough their way to the surface and sputter into the room. He took her hand, and she took his into her cold frightened grasp. Her eyes were too full of tears to see the look of desolation on his face; she would not have understood the look on his face in that tormented moment in time.

Sumner Welles was not aware of the crushed and defeated mein he wore; he was only aware of his own very real mortality, of the frailty of all life, of how every woman who had ever loved him - had died. He didn't want Diane Westhoven to die; he had been mortified when Rebecca Dassault had been diagnosed with breast cancer and passed away so soon thereafter, just as he had almost perished when his mother had passed away when he was but seven years old - from ovarian cancer. He loved, they loved, they died. It was a simple calculus, and it had colored his every waking moment for as far back as he could remember. He didn't trust life, or love, because death was always there, waiting. 

For Sumner Welles, life failed and love perished. 

Death triumphed.

class=Section2> 

He held life in his hands right now, a life that had loved him, and so desperately he clung to that life he never recognized the basic lie of his declaration. He couldn't see that his pain at Angela's departure was clouding his judgement. He no longer knew what the truth was.

But, oh, he felt so lonely. 

He never wanted to be lonely again.

+

Susan Katz met him as he came out of Diane's room.

"Mr Welles, did I hear you correctly? Did you tell Ms Westhoven that you love her? Is that the case?"

Sumner looked confused, out of focus. "I said that in a way I love her."

"Oh, and in what way might that be, Mr Welles?"

Sumner froze, the proverbial deer caught in the headlights of an on-rushing car.

"Can't you see what you did, sir. You told her what you thought she wanted to hear; not what you truly feel. You looked for a easy way out and you took it. Now, what is she going to do, how is she going to react, when she learns you were being less than truthful. How long do you want me to keep her in restraints . . .?"

"Less than truthful?" he whispered.

"YES!"

"Is it impossible to love someone and not want to live with them, marry them, follow that all too predictable path . . .?"

"Do you mean some kind of altruistic platonic love? Tell me, Mr Welles, do you really think that woman lying in there is reaching out for platonic love, that she felt compelled to end her life out of losing a connection to some vapid sophomoric idea of love? Oh, crap, you Harvard know-it-all shitheads . . ." She turned and walked away . . . "you're all the same!"

"Less than truthful . . .?" he said aloud, again, though just barely, as if in prayer.

+

He thought again of Nancy, and their conversation on the flight home after he had gotten off the phone talking to Angela. Had he led her on, too? Had he sent her signals, however unintentionally, that he had developed feelings for her? Had he really been the cause of events that had led two women to feel like ending their lives? Did the finger point at him?

He walked out of the hospital and over to the T Station, and got on the outbound Red Line train toward Harvard Square. As he walked into the car he looked at an old woman, obviously homeless, sitting at the back of the car, and facing away from the doorway. She stared vacantly out a window as the train gathered speed and crossed the Charles, her open toothless mouth making noiseless words in the air. She seemed to look at the words as they formed in the air, then both the old woman and her words dissipated into helplessness and despair. 

Sumner wondered what fool had driven this poor soul to such despair.

His mind drifted toward the wounded land of anomie. What a fool was he?

Had he acted in some way that killed Rebecca, or even his mother? Would he have driven Angela to these depths? Is that why she ran away? Had she recognized something dangerous in Sumner, and run from him in self-preservation? Why was he at the center of all these questions, he thought. 

Or indeed, was he? 

He withered under the weight of that question.

As he sat looking at the old woman, he was certain that he had in some way been responsible for these deaths. He was certain that he was a soul-murderer.




The Writer and The Word (03)



+

Sumner walked up from the T and crossed over busy streets and walked past the magazine stands lining Harvard Square as he made his way slowly to the dormitory. He felt as though the future he had come to understand, his future, had evaporated into the airs surrounding the old woman's hallucinatory gestures. He drifted across Harvard Yard feeling as though he was being carried along in the aimless air currents of this warm summer's evening. He looked at all the old buildings, the milestones of so many lives and careers etched across this almost ancient landscape, and he missed them already. He felt dead, that tomorrow he would only be someone else's memory. No reason to follow those broken dreams, he thought to himself, if everywhere he went he murdered those he loved. Had he really been so thoughtless as to wind his way through life so carelessly, taking other people's feelings with such callous disregard, and with such little account of his impact on their feelings?

As he walked through the campus he wondered what his future would look like, but it felt empty. Even as he now knew he was toxic to people, he missed the one voice he had come to love so quickly. So, he came to his dormitory and walked up the old steps flanked by ivy covered red brick, and made his way down the long hall toward his room.

As he drew closer to the door to his room, there in the dim light he saw a figure sitting by his door. Very few people were in the dorm over summer; just a few attending summer session, so he was surprised to see anyone at all in the hallway this hour of the evening. Coming closer to his door, the figure stood. 

There in the light was Angela White.

As he came to her, and saw her face radiantly glowing in the ancient air of the old dormitory, he felt that tightness in his chest that grew in the presence of her beauty. Her shining eyes sustained him, made the world make sense for a few precious moments, then his doubts returned, and he fell to the ground before her, fell into a ragged heap of tears. He curled up into a trembling ball of infantile fear as his sorrow and grief overcame him.

As Angela watched Sumner's face as he had drawn near, she saw all the sorrow another human can endure etched there in corrosive agony. She watched helplessly as he fell, listened as his tears took form in the space between them. She felt his soul's call as he lay there, and as she fell to his side, she felt the gentle hands of destiny shaping her body to comfort the wounded soul of her mate.

Angela White had never understood anything as perfectly as the love she now felt for Sumner Welles. As she lay there in the mists of time beside him, holding him, she drew him to her bosom, and was, she knew, prepared to lay there with him until time stopped.

+

She stood with him, walked with him into his room, and helped him to his bed. He tried to talk, but she quieted him, told him that they would have all the time in the world to talk. She pulled off his shoes, his trousers and socks, and unbuttoned his shirt. She pulled down his boxers, then took off her skirt and blouse, and she laid beside him on the bed. She pulled a small blanket up over them, and kissed him on the mouth. She held him as he fell asleep, and continued to look at him for what felt like hours, until sleep finally came for her.

As the dim light of morning came into the room, Angela woke when she felt Sumner's erection between her cheeks. She heard him snoring gently, and smiled as she realized he was responding to her warmth, and not making a move, but she spread her legs a bit and reached between her legs until she felt the head of his penis. She took him in her hand and rubbed the tip of his cock against the petals of her vagina until she could feel her warmth flowing, then she arched her back until she felt him entering her. She heard his breathing, and it still sounded as though he was sleeping, and she continued to move against him ever so gently, barely thrusting his cock in and out of her vagina.

She felt her response building - she was so softly rubbing her clitoris as she moved against him - and soon she was shuddering in her release. Then she felt his hands on her shoulder, then a kiss on the back of her neck, and she felt him thrusting into her with gentle urgency. Her orgasm simply extended it's hold on her, and she continued to shudder and convulse as it kept building and releasing. Then he rolled her over onto her back, and he moved on top her, positioned himself between her legs. He brought her ankles to his shoulders, lifted her vagina higher, then pierced her with his need. He drove himself in as deeply as he could, then began to thrust into her with deep, rapid thrusts.

He took her stockinged foot into his mouth, bit her toes, kissed her arch, all while fucking her relentlessly. She seemed to be lost in a perpetual orgasm, and he heard warm wet sounds coming from their union. He stroked away harder, felt his orgasm building, and he stopped. He lay down beside her on his back, and he pulled her on top. She reached down and found his cock, and grabbed it frantically, guiding it home toward her petals. She sat down on his cock fiercely as she felt his hands on her breast, and she moved her hips against his thrusts until she felt yet another orgasm building from deep within her womb. As she lost herself within the limitless waves of her orgasm, she felt Sumner thrusting harder, felt the head of his cock twitching inside her, then was surprised as she felt his cock spurting deep inside her womb.

She collapsed on him, bit his neck gently, and whispered into his ear, "Sum, I love you. I don't want to spend another moment of my life without you." She continued to rock away on top of him, and she felt him growing again inside of her. She lifted and lowered her loins on his cock as it strained and grew, and they were both borne again into the rapids of their lovemaking. Angela's back arched and her blond hair whirled above them like storm-whipped trees. She moved to the rhythm of the ancient music that consumed them both in the torrid flames of their desire, and she swayed as his fire grew within her. She felt his rod turn to steel, and when she did she lifted herself from his cock and placed it against the rosebud of her anus, and she sat down once again, let the music consume them again.

He felt the difference immediately, the tightness was exquisite, the gripping force of her sphincter held his cock firmly as he thrust into her and she thrust against him. Within seconds of the unexpected assault, he felt his orgasm build rapidly and explode into her bowels. She was thrashing about wildly as he did, lost in her own orgasm.

Like limbs of trees moving to stillness after the passing of a storm, their frenzy subsiding, Angela and Sumner receded into themselves, reaching out yet drawing inward, spiraling down from release to drifting currents of pleasure, all lost in the simultaneous decay of their fire. Finally their arms intertwined, and they fell into sleep's deep arms. All was right with their world.

+

Diane Westhoven lay on her back, her eyes still looking passively out the window at the lavender gray bricks across the little courtyard outside. Trees cast shadows across the walls, which she thought odd, as it was nighttime. She was inert to the world, appeared lost to the reality of motion. 

Yet her eyes betrayed little of the activity that flashed through her mind. She saw the moonshadowed trees dancing on he wall outside her window, but her mind's eye was focused most sharply on the image of Sumner Welles. She fought through the confines of her world-view, the constraints that dictated her response to his words. She heard his words, that in a way he loved her, and she viscerally felt the lie at the center of his declaration. Yet she knew Sumner wasn't a liar, that there was a core of truth within the young man that guided his every thought and deed. Why had he said that; what had he really meant?

Diane fought through waves of self-interest, impulses that told her to accept his declaration, and she would recede into the comfort of fantasies that sprang up from the fertile soil of her imagination. She would travel the byways of some unknown time and place where she and Sumner walked along white sands under gently swaying palm trees, holding hands, saying sweet things to one another as warm breezes danced through her hair. And every time she felt her hair dancing in the breeze, the brutal dishonesty of the delusion would drive the warmth from her heart and the sand from between her toes, and she would rattle back towards the truth of her circumstance. She would crash back from the world of what might have been to what very truly was.

She felt the raw pain of the stump that now graced the end of her left arm, and she saw that stump in her mind as the talisman of her new life, the symbol of her rebirth. She had cut herself away from her old life, the life of fantasy and delusion, where she had experienced love through the eyes of her heroines, felt life through the second hand illusions that were her fantasies, and the pain of her wound drew her to the truth. Her pain drew her to the reality that she had in word and deed found love, that she had felt love in the presence of another this past week.

As she receded from the warmth of her delusion, she thought of the little girl, Nancy Greenbaum, so lost yet so precious, and she would melt as she thought of her eyes looking up at her as they'd made love. She'd never felt love with women in the past; women had been playthings, parts of dramas and scenes used as accessories in her sojourns during the many meaningless encounters she'd had with men over the years. But suddenly, with Nancy, everything had been different.

She had struggled with the finality of Sumner's words on the airplane last week, struggled with the incomprehensible nature of her need for him, and just as suddenly the girl had appeared in her life, on her doorstep, and just as suddenly had worked her way into Diane's heart. And as suddenly as she'd felt love for Nancy, her motives had come into focus. Nancy hadn't wanted to meet her to know her or love her, she'd been Sumner's friend, and she wanted to protect her friend. She'd wanted to inflict pain, and had been willing to go to any length to do so. Yet, even as Diane understood this, she had allowed the girl deeper and deeper into her heart; she had known that Sumner was the delusion and Nancy was her reality, and her love. The knowledge of this love, coming on the heels of her fall from Sumner, had fractured her sense of self. She had drifted deeper into the wounds that the impossibility of the affair inflicted. She had, she now realized laying in the moon-bathed room, fallen in love with a teenaged girl, and she was destitute under the impact of that knowledge.

As she lay there, drifting, one thought kept bursting to the fore. Where was Nancy Greenbaum? Why wouldn't anyone tell her anything about Nancy Greenbaum?

+

Sumner and Angela were at Boston's Logan Airport just after noon, both of them with tickets to London on the mid-afternoon flight.

They had slept until just before the sun came up, then made love with a passion that took them both by surprise. As Sumner had tossed about in the turmoil of his climax, he had declared his love to Angela for all eternity, had declared his intent to spend every waking moment of his life with her. He had thrown his soul on her mercy, and she had embraced him with all her heart could extend. She had told him then, in no uncertain terms, that she knew she loved him, had found that out the hard way - by questioning his motives and not listening to her heart. She said it was a mistake she would never make again.

But she had tossed out a rather big surprise: she had declared her absolute resolve to never live in the United States, to never become an American citizen, and to not have any child of hers raised in America.

Sumner had been confused at that; how did their love equate with where they would live. But he had listened to her, to her abhorrence of the Bush presidency and his foreign policy, of Bush's reckless disdain for responsible environmental policies, and for the globalization of corporate management for which he stood; while he didn't agree with all she said, he understood her point of view. Hell, he had thought, almost every professor at Harvard espoused the same views, as did just about every responsible newspaper in the country.

The simple fact of the matter was that the Welles family represented just about every so-called evil she was standing up against. Sumner had never taken any position on these facts about his family and its activities. He had never considered himself evil, at least not until he had thought about his role in Diane Westhoven's near suicide, and now he wasn't too sure that he would consider his role evil. An indiscreet show of emotion, perhaps, and a reckless disregard to take into account that Nancy Greenbaum might have indeed fixated on him, however founded in delusion that fixation might have been. And was he too rough in his verbal address to Ms Westhoven while on flight 481? Had she not enquired quite explicitly that she wanted Sumner to give his soul to her. Beyond the mere sophomoric emotional content of her pathetic enquiry, she had in a way been serious: she went through life demolishing other's lives with her need to sadistically dominate men the central feature of her life and "literature".She hated men, but had yet to grasp that central feature of her life. 

Had she tried to commit suicide as a means of inflicting pain on Sumner? Was she really that twisted? And what about that psychiatrist, that Susan Katz? Why had she been so angry at him? Sumner wondered what she felt about men, and thought that she was probably a lesbian as well.

As Sumner followed these random threads of thought, he returned to Angela their beside him in his dormitory bed. He thought his country was indeed in crisis, but it was his country. He told her he would consider moving to London, but only after spending more time there. He really wasn't prepared to consider leaving America behind. Hers was a troubling declaration.

He had called his father, advised him that he was off to London for a visit, and Bennett Welles had listened with a wry grin on his face. Perhaps he would have done the same when he had been younger, he thought. He was almost certain that his son would marry the girl within the week, perhaps in London. Best get on to the ambassador about that, he thought, and smooth the way for them if he could.

+

Nancy Greenbaum had slept through most of the past two days, and she had come to only to find herself in restraints with her mouth dry and foul tasting. She felt disoriented, almost drunk, and quickly came to the conclusion that she had been sedated. In fact, she had been heavily sedated, and in consequence had little awareness of what had gone on around her, or how long she had been out of it. As she became progressively more aware of her surroundings, she was released from the restraints and helped into the bathroom by a floor nurse, where she bathed - holding her head under the hot water for what felt like an eternity, letting the hot water course over her neck. 

She had then been allowed to put on her regular street clothes, and was escorted to a physician's office. Her father was there, and he introduced her to a Dr Susan Katz. Nancy's father told her that he had pieced together many of the events leading up to Ms Westhoven's suicide attempt, but he had not understood why she had herself expressed suicidal thoughts. While she had voluntarily admitted herself for psychiatric review, that time was now almost up, and he wanted her to talk with Dr Katz about events and decide what she wanted to do. He told her that he loved her, and that he would be waiting outside.

Surprisingly, Dr Katz began talking to Nancy by updating her on the basics of Diane Westhoven's medical condition, and what she had learned after talking with her for several hours over almost three days. She hadn't had much to say about her attempt to undermine Diane emotionally; had she taken it as an expression of vast adolescent immaturity?

Then Dr Katz had asked her a question.

"Do you have any feelings for Diane, Nancy?"

Nancy was silent; she didn't know what dark shapes hid behind the question, what the implications of her actions might be.

"Nancy, I expect you feel some guilt over the consequences of your actions, you wouldn't be human if you didn't. But let me ask you, how do you think Diane feels about you?"

Nancy drew deep within herself, tried to hide from the reality of that question.

"Nancy, you have to talk with somebody about this. These feelings aren't going to just vanish, and the longer you hide from these questions, the more they are going to eat away at your soul. Would you like to talk to Diane?"

"God, no!" Nancy fairly screamed. She started to cry.

"So, tell me Nancy. Tell me how you think she feels about you?"

"She must hate me," Nancy managed to get out before her tears engulfed her completely. "She must fucking hate me . . ." she continued between racking, gulping sobs.

class=Section3> 

Dr Katz simply let Nancy express her grief, she let her cry. She watched the young girl all hunched up, bouncing up and down in her chair as her sobbing made her dance about like a puppet on a string. As Nancy's crying subsided, Dr Katz stood up and came over to her and put her hand on the girl's head. She stroked her head gently, told her that it would be alright soon, but that she had to trust someone, and that she cared.

Nancy pulled away from the physician, huddled back within herself, waiting for the gales within to subside, but they never seemed to . . .

"Nancy, I want you to come with me now."

"Where?"

"To see Diane."

"No way. No way . . ." Nancy barked out. She pulled into a ball.

The doctor stood there with her hand extended. "Come on, Nancy. This has to be done, and the sooner the better."

Nancy cringed at the hand before her face. She made no effort to move.

Dr Katz went to her telephone and called her secretary outside the office. "O.K., Penny, bring her down here."

"What, are you fucking crazy!?" screamed Nancy. "Didn't you listen, can't you understand fucking English?"

Dr Katz just stood there, between Nancy and the door. Afer a few minutes there was a light knocking, and Nancy's father was wheeling Diane Westhoven into the little office. He parked the wheel chair away from Nancy, and started to leave the room again.

"Daddy?" Nancy pleaded. "Daddy, what . . ."

"Listen to Dr Katz, Nance, you need to listen to what she has to say." He walked out of the room, and closed the door behind him.

+

Diane Westhoven looked at Nancy with a shyness she had not expected, with a tenderness in her heart she never knew existed. She saw the pain etched on the girls face, could plainly see the conflict boiling away there. She looked at Nancy, knew what she had to say. 

"I'm not mad at you, Nancy."

"Oh, yeah? That's 'cause you don't know shit."

"Yes I do, Nancy. I know you developed feelings for Sumner, felt angry at how I treated him on the plane home from London, deservedly so, I would say. I think I know why you seduced me." Diane looked at Nancy, who was now raising her face from the depths of her private despair, and continued, "And I even know what you did in my home to save my life. You did, you know? You saved my life. The paramedics mentioned that in their report. Nancy," Diane said, "thank you for giving me my life back."

Nancy looked across the immeasurable gulf between Diane and herself, trying to measure the distance between two hearts, and was stunned to see on Diane's face the most surreal peace glowing there. No, that wasn't quite right, Nancy thought. She saw tenderness, acceptance, and love, and the realization that Diane felt these emotions sent her reeling under blows of guilt and gales of shame. "I didn't do anything," Nancy said.




The Writer and The Word (03)



"You've done everything, my love."

Nancy recoiled from Diane's declaration. She seemed to drift toward shock.

"Nancy. I always knew what you were doing, it was plain to see. But I saw something in you that seemed to define the solution to a great problem I have. I saw you headed toward an abyss, an abyss where love is framed between retribution and decay, where love is consigned to the oblivion of anger. But I saw something greater, in you, Nancy, that took me completely by surprise. I saw in you the very last chance I will have in this life to come to know true love, because I saw into your heart, saw into your love for me . . ."

Nancy convulsed into paralyzed sorrow, felt her conflicted tears shutting down her ability to breath. "How did you know . . ." she managed to ask.

"Because you didn't hide that from me, Nancy. At least not as well as you think you did! Your love was very plain for me to see. It was misfocused, and obscure in the beginning; as you came to terms with your hate. Yet I feel I recognized the false claim it had on your heart, and it was as if I saw you change before my eyes. I saw your misguided hate flower into love. Love for me, Nancy. And then I knew what had been hitting at me for days: I knew I loved you, too."

Nancy came to her, placed her head in Diane's lap as she knelt before her. Diane wanted for all the world to hold her tightly to her breast, but that gesture was now almost an impossibility for her. With but one functional arm, she had been trying to come to grips with the reality of this new limitation, but suddenly, in Nancy's quiet gesture, she no longer felt limited or constrained.

"Nancy, I know you start school in August, but that's almost six weeks away," Diane continued. "I want you to come home with me, help me get adjusted to . . . my new circumstances. And we can just take it day by day. But if you'd like it, Nancy, I'd really like you to be a part of my life . . . I love you, and I want you."

Nancy had been looking up at Diane during all of this, and as Diane finished speaking Nancy stood and kissed her, then held out her hand to Diane. "Well, alright then. We'd better get you home."

Diane sat in her chair, but kissed Dr Katz gently on the cheek as she knelt down to say her goodbyes, then took Nancy's hand in hers. The two women, so different yet so alike, moved from the office. As Nancy walked Diane past her father in the waiting room, he simply said "Good luck, sweetie." He then went in to talk with Susan Katz.

+

Several weeks later, Sumner and Angela were walking from Paddington Station to her London apartment. Sumner had purchased a small estate near the village of Welles, a few hours southwest of London, but near the cultural center of Bath, and famous for the architectural beauty of it's cathedral. His new property wasn't huge, perhaps a little over two hundred acres, but the house on it was new, and, well, it wasn't small. He'd had a heliport completed, and had made arrangements to commute to Harvard for his last term there in the fall.

While Sumner had been to England many times over the years, he had never really been there to see it through the eyes of a native, and he had fallen in love with the land and the people quickly. Like many Americans, raised speaking the mantra that America was the beacon of liberty and that there was no place better, he had been shocked to see the people of England not content to voice empty slogans about liberty and democracy. They had embraced it, and fought for it as Americans once had, but they had not taken these profound gifts for granted, as Americans had.

Sumner saw in Europe the ideas America had stood for - and fought to ensure - now in full bloom, while at home these ideas were under assault by tyrannical neo-conservative evangelists and people desperate to cling to a very uncertain past. He had few regrets about his choice to marry Angela and remain in England. He knew he would miss the seething cauldron of America's cities, the vibrant interplay of myth and melting pot creating an ever changing landscape of new ideas and new technologies, but he feared the era of American entrepreneurship was at an end, that it would cave in to the religious extremism of the neo-conservatives. One element seemed to characterize these zealots: the were intolerant of any change that didn't conform to some scriptural interpretation of the world, and hence Sumner knew, they were doomed to destroy the American experiment which was, after all, predicated on violent and often unpredictable change.

So Sumner Welles and Angela White had wed, standing under the centuries old scissor arch that defined the nave of Welles Cathedral, whispering ancient words in the ancient space, joining and moving into the never-ending flow of time as one. They had kissed, and looked at one other, still enraptured with what they saw in each others eyes.

+

Nancy Greenbaum and Diane Westhoven were joined in civil union just before Christmas that year in a ceremony at the Old North Church. Diane had resumed writing, but more often than not she dictated to Nancy as they sat fireside in the evenings after Nancy returned from her classes at Harvard. Nancy often spoke of Sumner, keeping Diane informed of his progress through school, his acceptance of a Rhodes Scholarship, and his now permanent status of Citizen of the Commonwealth, a subject of the Queen.

It was no small irony that Sumner Welles stood beside Diane Westhoven by the alter of the Old North Church, stood beside her at Nancy's request. He was the father of their union, after all, as he had ushered their joining into this world just as surely as he had once nearly torn them from this world. 

Nor was it a small irony when Diane's latest book hit the New York Times bestsellers list after the new year had come and gone, and remained there for almost eighteen months. She and Nancy, looking at the continuing deterioration of liberty and freedom in America, and the increasingly dangerous conditions that now confronted lesbian couples in the wave of hyper-puritanical hysteria that accompanied the election of Jeb Bush to be the 44th President of the United States, decided to move to Switzerland.

The name of her book, you ask?

The Autobiography of my Suicide.

Dedicated, you might presume, to Sumner Welles and Angela White. And you would be correct in your presumption. But that, dear reader, is another story.