Dec 10
Do it. I dare you.
Jim had a few seconds to decide. Hours on the road, hands cemented to the wheel by a layer of sweat, and sick of every CD in the company car’s changer. The monotony of selling pharmaceuticals. The fucking road, never-ending, eyes turning to liquid after staring into the sun for hours on end. He had a few seconds to decide.
Ahead, she sat on her pack at the side of the road.
I dare you.
It had been nagging him a lot these past few weeks–the inner idiot. The one that wanted to quit spending his time driving all over the province, the one that wanted to walk into the office and say to hell with all you jam-asses. Now it wanted him to break his boredom by picking up a hitchhiker. It was weak, sure. Silly, even. It wouldn’t be a bold, life-changing event to spend a few hours in the car with a stranger on company time. But it was the best he could manage until some manager’s nattering babble pushed him to do something with a little more punch.
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Nov 25
The story begins at a Quik Mart in upstate New York.
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1. Watching Rani reach.
It all started innocently enough as far as I was concerned. I would stop at a gas station on my way to work and pick up the morning paper and a cup of coffee. The only reason I began stopping at this particular place was that it was easy to get in and out of. The reason I continued to go there was Rani.
Rani worked the cash register on weekdays. She was a very pleasant, albeit shy, young woman who had recently come to America from India and was studying at the State University in the city. Rani was about 20 years old and wore glasses. She wore her hair pulled back and had a very cute and petite figure. Originally I had begun talking with her and hanging around for a minute or two because she was fun to talk to. One day she gave me another reason to loiter; an even more compelling one for me.
“Pack of Newports.”
That was what some anonymous customer asked one morning as I sipped my coffee and waited for Rani to get the guy’s cigarettes so we could resume our conversation on foreign policy. I happened to be watching Rani as she looked for the guy’s brand. This store had all the cigarettes in a rack that was above the cash register, and as Rani reached for the Newports I saw an amazing sight.
Rani had to reach high for the cigarettes, being only about five foot tall. As she did the sleeve on her yellow uniform top slid up slightly. Peeking out of the sleeve opening was a spray of coal black hair, with the promise of much more hidden in the shadow.
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Nov 23
Chapter One: In the tub.
It’s no fun being disabled, I learned, even if the disability isn’t permanent. The things you are used to doing for yourself quite easily become major chores requiring considerable effort. While the back surgery I just had endured would eventually make life a lot easier, for the forseeable future I was going to need a lot of assistance.
Being a widower, there was no one at home to give me the help I was going to need. One thing I knew for certain was that there was no way I was going to a nursing home or anything like that. I was only 59, and while that’s not the prime of life, I still had my pride.
Luckily, I had good insurance, and after getting out of the hospital I was able to get the services of an agency that would provide a home health care aide for a few hours each day. It wasn’t cheap, but the insurance company logically figured out the money they would save by keeping me out of the hospital, and quickly agreed to it.
The first person didn’t work out very well. Not only did he have a shaky grasp of the language, I also felt uncomfortable being handled, shall we say, intimately? There was only one man I trusted to handle my equipment, and that man was me. Being alone for several years gave me way too many occassions to prove that I was no “master of my domain”, but if I was going to be taken care of in those personal regions I wanted the person to be female. Call me what you will.
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Nov 21
1. The love of my life.
The first moment I saw her, I knew I wanted to marry her. She was a tall slender woman with flaming red hair who looked like a movie star to me. I watched every move she made all day, every day, and her beauty was unmatched by any woman I had ever seen. She had perfect white teeth that sparkled when she smiled, and that face would light up the room at those times. Her face, neck and arms were covered with freckles, and I wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of my life counting them.
Although she was in her thirties she dressed in the fashion of the sixties, with long flowing skirts and loud colors. She used to wear a green and rust colored paisley dress that was a particular favorite of mine, and days she wore that were special indeed.
There were a few obstacles that stood in the way of my quest of this ravishing goddess. One of the major problems was the fact that Mrs. Murray was married. The other thing standing in my way was the fact that she was my teacher. My third grade teacher. These were quite formidable problems, although at the time I didn’t understand why. All I knew was that I loved her.
I excelled in third grade, so much so that if you reviewed my report cards from my school career, it looks like someone else stood in for me that year. I wanted so much to please her that I studied every night and did my homework willingly and thoroughly.
When Mrs. Murray would make the rounds of the room, the times when she would stop by my desk would almost cause me cardiac arrest. I would watch as she would point at my paper, but my eyes were fixated on her pale freckled arms and the downy hair that covered her forearms, so light in color it was almost invisible.
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Nov 17
Chapter One: Lust at First Sight.
I recognized Pam the moment I saw her walk into the restaurant, even though we had never met. The same young woman that had walked nervously past the front window of the establishment several times in the last half hour with her eyes darting as she tried to look inside without being obvious about it, and failing miserably.
I had recognized her by way she had described herself to me in the hundreds of messages we had exchanged over the last several months over the internet. She was more attractive than she had led me to believe, but that didn’t surprise me, as she had displayed a tendency to be self-depreciating, a trait that I had found charming, especially given the way people usually act.
Pam was twenty-three, and had just celebrated her birthday last month, an event that I had noted with a rather clever card that I had created. It was that card that had helped lead to the point I found myself that evening.
I watched as Pam looked around the restuarant nervously, eyes down and sneaking furtive glances about. She seemed to be about 5′4″ and slender, with wavy dark brown hair that was about shoulder length. Pam was wearing a dark blue sweater and matching slacks that effectively covered her from neck to toe, just as I had expected.
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