American Backroads
Making Plans
Preface
THIS IS PART TWO of Wonders of My World. I wrote about my first eighteen months on the road in U.S. Highways. I’m still on the road and this covers the next fourteen months of the journey in American Backroads. The road goes ever on.
So, I’ll get on with the adventure as soon as I make the usual disclaimers. Here are the further adventures of Aroslav, the avatar of the pseudonym of the alter ego of an author. Parse that. There’s a lot of story and sightseeing—almost a travelogue in places—and a fair amount of sex. And over 60 photos—not of the sex. That, after all, was the story Alice wanted to hear. At the beginning of this story, I’d already made one full circuit around the U.S., staying off interstates as much as possible. I was trying to fill a map on the back of the trailer with the states I’d visited and had recorded thirty-seven states. I had a few more to go on my second circuit.
When I started writing about my road trip, my memory was flooded with the wonderful women I’ve known and loved and fantasized about in my life. I get sidetracked a lot and those memories from long ago become as important to me as the story I’m writing in the now. Bear with me. It’s my life. Based on the true story of my travels, only the names, places, and events have been changed to protect me—I mean the innocent—and to keep several wonderful women from hunting me down.
If you think you recognize yourself at some point in this story and want to scream, “I didn’t do that!” don’t. It isn’t you. I’ve freely combined aspects of lots of different people into single characters to simplify things. Many of the activities are lifted from still other characters, but seem to fit in the story or with the composite that I made up where they appear. No one is really who they appear to be, so don’t insult yourself by assuming I’m telling lies about you. These are adventures I’ve had—sometimes only in my mind. Which women I had them with and whether they knew about it is still concealed.
The problem is that I’ve fallen in love with each of them.
These are the stories of my life.
5 December 2014
“YOU’LL KILL THIS OLD MAN, ALICE.”
“Aw, Ari. I’ve lain with my head on your heart listening to it beat. I know how strong it is. Can I come?”
“I hope so. Several times,” I laughed. “Honey, I would love to have you visit me. It would be easiest for you to fly into Phoenix. Do you have any idea when you can get here?”
“Well… um… Now that I’ve gotten you to agree… I’ve got almost a month off. I could, sort of, be there for Solstice if you’d like. I mean, unless you’ve got someone else handy to finish your ritual with. Could we?”
“You’d better believe we could. Let me see if I can get a condo in Scottsdale that week. We could spend a week in luxury before we go rough it in Quartzsite.”
“Yes! Someplace with a hot tub and a pool and… Oh, Ari! I’m so excited!” she said. I could hear the longing in her voice. I knew it was reflected in my own voice.
“Are you moist-excited, wet-excited, or dripping-excited?” I asked.
“You’re going to have to get your face down there and find out for yourself, baby. I think you’re going to like what you find.”
“I’m sure of it.”
“Have you told Cassie that the campground there is nude?” Alice asked after we’d gone through another round of smoochie noises.
“Um… I suppose I should do that. They plan to start the trek after they celebrate Christmas with her kids. Do you think she’ll mind?” I asked. I fully expected her to decide to camp in a completely different part of the BLM and never set foot inside the Magic Circle. I wouldn’t be surprised if they booked a slot in one of the full hook-up sites in town. Alice and I would join them at their campsite, fully clothed.
“I have to go to class, lover. I’ll send you my flight details. You know, I could never live with you full time, Ari. How’s a stripper supposed to make a living in a nudist park? Put clothes on?”
We disconnected and I sat at the coffee shop in Tucson thinking about the call I needed to make to Cassie and Andy. I’d been putting it off, but I needed to let them know. It was only fair.
A Long Time Ago: Voyeur
THAT ONE TIME. There’s always that one time.
We were in junior high. We’d all been sent to church camp for a week. Everybody in the neighborhood. I wondered what the parents did while the kids were sent away. Most of us would be in seventh grade in the fall. Of course, we were mixed with kids from fifty or a hundred different churches and then segregated into cabins by sex. Twelve campers and two counselors per cabin and no matter what you might have heard about camps, no one got out of their cabin after lights out without an adult escort.
The church was in charge of our innocence at Camp Wonderland.
Good luck with that.
A hallmark of puberty is curiosity. It’s not like we boys wanted to go fuck all the girls in camp. Most of us only had a vague notion of what fucking was and the word was so secretive that no one said it out loud. But we were a perverted lot when it came to trying to catch a glimpse of the girls. Or their underwear. One boy was reprimanded for taking pictures of the girls’ swimsuits hanging on the line to dry. One of the suits was carelessly turned inside out, so we could see the padded cups and lined crotch of the one-piece suit. I think guys beat off to that image later that night.
There was a rumor that Sally had been caught trying to peek into the boys’ restroom, so it wasn’t just the boys that were curious.
Our activities outside the cabins were coed and the small groups were made of half boys and half girls. We hiked together, ate our meals together, and did crafts. We all braided lanyards and learned to burn our names into a slice of wood with a magnifying glass. I was one of the first to learn four-stranded square braiding and had a day of popularity helping the girls who wanted to learn. Then there were the usual activities like canoeing, archery, lawn darts (yes, they were still legal back then), swimming.
I think that, in addition to all of us trying to get a glimpse of the developing bodies of our counterparts, there was a little bit of exhibitionism going on, as well. It was almost as exciting to think of a girl getting a look at your dangler as it was to think of seeing her boobs. Cabin doors were sometimes left slightly ajar—or even wide open—while we changed to swimsuits.
And that’s how it happened that I was accidentally passing the girls’ cabin on the way to the pool, which was the other direction, after racing to get into my own trunks. Wouldn’t you know, I’d get caught.
By Cassie.
We hadn’t been close since second grade, though we saw each other often enough in the neighborhood, at school, and at church. She was my next-door neighbor and got on the bus a stop before mine. I don’t know why, but it always seemed like I was sitting three seats behind her on the bus. I mean, like that was always the next seat available when I got on the bus.
But she was never mean. Not like some of her friends. One girl brought a copy of Mad Magazine to school and pointed at the picture of Alfred E. Neuman on the cover. “Look! Aroslav is in a magazine!” she’d called out to her friends. I really hated that bitch. Especially after she turned me down for a date as a freshman.
Nonetheless, I was ‘passing’ the girls’ cabin and there was Cassie. I just missed seeing her little boobs as she pulled her swimsuit up and she lifted her eyes and looked straight into mine. I was done for. I was sure she’d scream and I’d get hauled before a judge and sent home where my parents would gleefully hang me from the willow tree in the back yard. Shit!
She didn’t scream. I saw her mouth the word ‘naughty’ and then turn away. Her suit wasn’t all the way up and she did quite a job of wiggling her butt to get it up, but I didn’t expect her to call out, “Hey, Sally. Do you think my suit is getting too small?”
Sally turned toward Cassie and I saw a full frontal view of her awesome tits as she pulled her suit up. Sally was focused on Cassie and not on me so after burning that image into my mind I hustled myself away from the cabin and over to the pool. I had my towel held in front of me to keep from showing my stiffy and as soon as the lifeguard blew the whistle, I threw it aside and dove into the cold water.
I wasn’t going to get out of the pool, no matter how cold it was. Every time I looked at a girl, I saw Sally’s headlights staring back at me. I felt a brush along my shoulder and turned to see Cassie floating past me on her back.
When a girl floats on her back… Yeah. Her boobs are right up there out of the water. Right where I could sort of stare at them.
“Pervert,” she whispered to me. She splashed me and grinned before swimming away. She never mentioned it again.
Back to Cassie
I’D PUT THINGS OFF as long as I dared. Cassie had given me her phone number at the reunion, but I’d never used it. So far, all our communication had been through messages. But it was the second week of December and I’d left my site in Coronado National Forest to go to Tucson for supplies. I had a cell connection, so there was really no excuse.
“Cassie, it’s Ari. Aroslav.”
“Ari? What are you doing calling me? My husband might have been home!”
“Um… Cassie, he knows I’m going to be at Quartzsite, doesn’t he?”
“Quartzsite? Oh. Yeah, of course. Is that what this is about?” She sounded relieved. “We’re leaving the day after Christmas.”
“It’s not fair for me not to tell you about the site where I plan to camp in case you want to choose a different location,” I said.
“What is it? On the edge of a cliff?”
“Uh… no. The Magic Circle is seventy acres that are reserved as clothing optional.”
“You mean… naked?”
“Well, yeah. It’s not a requirement, but most of the people in that area are nudists.” There was silence on the other end of the line. “There are other areas nearby that aren’t nude. I mean the BLM land there is thousands of acres and you can camp almost everywhere.” Nothing. “Cassie, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to deceive you.”
“Yeah. Damn. Excuse me. You’re a nudist. Oh, wow.” She was quiet again.
“Cassie?”
“I’m just trying to get my head around the concept. Give me a minute. Don’t say anything!” she shouted. I waited. I know time is relative, but it sure seemed like more than a minute. “You know what this means, don’t you?” she whispered when she returned to the phone.
“I’m hoping the worst is that you’ll camp in a different part of the grounds and we’ll still get together to swap stories and have a mojito or two,” I said.
“Are you kidding? Andy would kill me if he had the opportunity to see a couple hundred beautiful naked women and I took him someplace else.”
“Well, most of them are our age or older, Cassie. Don’t get his hopes up too much.”
“It’s not his hopes I’m concerned about.”
“Okay. Then what’s it mean?”
“It means that finally, after waiting decades, you are going to see my naked breasts,” she whimpered. “Damn it, Ari! I wish I’d shown you in junior high instead of getting Sally to flash you. My boobs were worth looking at then. I’m all saggy now,” she sounded distressed.
“We’re all a little saggy now, Cass. People don’t go there to look at other people’s privates. There’s no judgment. No body-shame allowed.”
“Andy will be trying to find the most beautiful pair in the campground.”
“He won’t have to look far,” I said. I took a deep breath. “They’ll be attached to the woman sitting on my lap.”
“Ari, you can look at my breasts and… everything else, I suppose, but I’m not going to sit in your lap. I don’t think. I wonder if I could convince Andy… Hmm.” Cassie had completely misunderstood me. It seemed so natural for her to simply assume she’d have the best looking boobs in the camp. I chuckled and contemplated letting her keep her ideas. It’s not like I’d object to having naked Cassie Clinton sitting on my lap for a while. Even at our age. I sighed.
“Alice is a good sport, but I don’t think she’ll share my lap with you,” I said.
“Ari! You have a girlfriend?” Cassie shrieked. “Who is she? Tell me all about her. Was she in our class? Your class at Tippecanoe Valley? A college friend? Come on! Spill it, boyfriend.” I held the phone away from my ear and looked at it. Boyfriend?
“She’s actually… a little younger. You’ll like her though. She’s really sweet.”
“A little younger? Ari, how much younger?”
“Um… a lot younger,” I hedged.
“Ari, you’re not paying a hooker to go camping with you, are you? I’m so disappointed,” Cassie said.
“Cassie! It’s not like that at all. Alice really is my friend. And when we get together, we’re lovers. She is not a hooker. In fact, she’s even paying her own way down here.”
“From where?”
“Montana.”
“Wow. I mean… wow. Sorry I jumped to conclusions.”
“What could I expect? Old men like me don’t have pretty young women sleeping with them unless they get paid to,” I said a little angrily.
“I’m sorry, Ari. Really.” We both took a minute to calm down. “It is sort of cliché, isn’t it?” she giggled. “Have you been together long?”
“We’ve only spent a week together before this. Last summer. She’ll be with me for three weeks down here and I know I’m going to miss her like crazy when she’s gone back home.”
“You have an interesting life, Ari.”
“You’re not mad at me, are you, Cassie?”
“Hmph. No. You could have given me more notice so I could have lost fifty pounds and gotten an all-over tan. Ari, just tell me you won’t be disgusted when you see me.”
“Cassie, even when I held you in my arms at the reunion, what I saw there—what I felt there—was the fifteen-year-old I last saw freshman year. You can’t disgust me.”
A Long Time Ago: Tripping the Light Fantastic
DURING MY PhD WORK, I realized the truth of what Paula had told me when we divorced. I wasn’t going to earn a living as a playwright and probably not as a novelist. I was burnt out in theater. But I still had to pay the rent while I slogged through writing my dissertation. And there was one skill I had that I could fall back on.
I could type.
I’d mastered the skill on an old Royal as a junior in high school. We only had one electric typewriter in our class—poor school. I got to use it a couple of times, but always seemed to jam the keys. When I sat at my first IBM Selectric, the limits came off my speed. I’d tested at 110 words per minute. Error free. I was a writer. Typing was a tool of the trade.
I went to a temp agency. They did not comprehend. They sent me out to the world’s worst job.
We compare worst jobs when we’re out drinking with new friends. It’s just a bar game while we’re getting to know each other. I win.
I slashed tires.
I’d been sent to a tire distribution center. It wasn’t a tire store, but more like a huge warehouse where they sent tires out to all the service centers and received new tires by the truckload. They also received old tires from dealers. Most of them were damaged or warranty exchanges that were destined for a landfill somewhere. There was talk about other things that could be made from old tires and I’d seen a playground that had the surface covered with recycled rubber from old tires. But before they could leave the distribution center, the company had to be sure that they couldn’t be scavenged, sold again, or returned on a warranty claim.
Hence, my job. I was handed a pair of bolt cutters and pointed to floor-to-ceiling palettes of dirty used tires. My job was to cut the bead where the tires joined the rim and toss the old tires into a semi-trailer. It was dirty—no, filthy—back-breaking work. I was exhausted at the end of the day. I went to my empty apartment and sank gratefully into a tub of hot water with a glass of scotch in my hand. After the bath, I spent an hour scrubbing the filth out of the tub. I ruined four handkerchiefs by blowing my nose.
Day two on the job was no better. I found I had tears running down my cheeks each time I lifted and threw a tire into the truck. My shoulders ached from operating the bolt cutters, not just on auto tires, but truck and tractor tires as well. At noon, I dragged myself to the supervisor’s office. I was devastated. I was going to do something I’d never done before. He waved me in and I sank into a chair across his desk.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this. I have to quit.” I said. “I can’t take this work any longer. I’m sorry. I just can’t go on this afternoon.” The supervisor looked severely at me and his lips twitched. He started with a chuckle and then hit an all-out belly laugh. I didn’t get it. He wiped a tear away from his eyes.
“You’re something else,” he said. “Everybody in the warehouse lost their bets when you showed up for work this morning. We’ve never had one come back!”
Fuck!
I returned to the temp agency the next day and begged for an office job. Type? You can type? The consultant had a hard time believing me, but as soon as she tested me, she had a job to send me to.
And that’s how I ended up at the huge real estate and building franchise company. After a week on the job catching up on all their backlog of word processing, they bought out my contract with the temp agency and I was hired to manage the word processing department. I was taken to the break room after work on Friday and was officially welcomed to the company at the private bar with a glass of premium scotch.
I was going to like working in the real estate industry.
And I was going to like Cynthia.
She was an admin for the VP of sales, so she wasn’t in my direct line of management. I’m not sure it would have made a difference. Our office was one of those that ten years later would have been sued for sexual harassment, discrimination, and god-knows what else if the franchise industry had held together that long. We were pretty loose and it was very male-dominated. My hire as a manager of all the female word processing operators was considered typical, even if I was resented a little for taking the only possible management position that a woman might have had a chance at.
Hanging around the open bar on Friday nights was often a prelude to various couples—often with one or both married to someone else—taking off for parts unknown together. When she found out I was single, Cynthia made it her mission in life to end that condition for me. Only not to her.
“Ari, you know Linda, right?” Cynthia said. “Could you give her a lift home tonight? Why don’t you stop and have dinner first?” Linda and I looked at each other, nodded and left. Linda wasn’t looking for a husband. She was looking to get laid. I was happy to oblige. The next week, Cynthia was back with another secretary.
“Ari, I know you love James Bond movies and there’s a new one opening this weekend. Did you know Kathy is a fan, too? Why don’t the two of you catch it tonight?” Cynthia said, shoving us out the door together. Kathy was a fan of trying to mimic the dances that the Bond girl did in the opening credits. She was pretty damned good at it. It was nice to see those dances with the actual naked girl in front of you instead of just the silhouette.
Of course, not all the dates worked out. Some of the women weren’t as enthused about Cynthia’s meddling as others. Some of us didn’t get along. Some just outright refused to participate in her games. But over the course of six months, Cynthia had arranged for me to fuck six different women. Not all of them were employees.
One night, we’d been sitting around drinking in the private bar and a few of us stayed a little longer than usual. It had been a stressful week. One of the guys suggested we just all go over to the Ramada across the street and have dinner. Greg, our boss, agreed to treat the eight of us and we gladly joined in. Greg was an odd guy who was smart enough to found and manage a small franchise empire, but tried to talk like a New Jersey thug. I captured his voice in a story I wrote a few years later. Intentional bad grammar to establish himself as a common man made good.
The Ramada had a decent restaurant, but they also had a great bar. That night, they had a good DJ who could really keep the music flowing. So, after dinner, we danced. And danced.
Having spent the past eight years around theater people, I’d learned how to dance. I’ve gotten rusty at it now, but back then I could waltz. I could swing. I could two-step. And sometimes I’d just freestyle. Getting on a dance floor with someone who could follow nuances and was just tipsy enough to let loose was a real pleasure. Someone like Cynthia. We got moving in a combo swing and disco dance that started to shake things up. In fact, the dance floor cleared. We were too caught up in what we were doing to even notice until coins started hitting the floor around us. I grabbed her hand, spun her around and dropped into a dip from which I gave her a very sound kiss. I don’t know if she was more surprised by the kiss or by the applause.
We got off the dance floor and made our way to the table we’d been at only to find the rest of our group had long gone. Drinks arrived at the table and I looked at the waitress.
“Compliments of the house,” she said. “Nice dance. Haven’t seen anything like that since I left New York.” The dance floor was full now and that was good because whatever just happened out there was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
“Damn it!” Cynthia said.
“What?”
“That damned Erin left without me. How am I supposed to get home?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got my car.” Stupidly, we downed our margaritas before we left and I put a few dollars on the table for our waitress. I fumbled with my keys and got the door open for her. She slid in and I went around to the driver’s side. Cynthia looked at me.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“What, the dance? I have no idea. We just seemed to click,” I laughed.
“I don’t mean the dance,” she said. “I mean the kiss.”
I didn’t answer. I just reached across the console and pulled her toward me. Our lips came together and our tongues quickly followed. In her own way, Cynthia had been teasing me with other women for six months and I wasn’t willing to let her escape this time. Not that she was trying to. She was practically crawling across the console in our embrace. I found her lush tit with my hand and she moaned into my mouth.
“The kiss was just the beginning,” I whispered to her.
“I don’t think it’s safe for you to drive after you’ve been drinking so much,” she said. “Let’s get a room.”
We quickly got out of the car and tried—unsuccessfully—to control ourselves until we got into the hotel. We both looked like we’d been in a wrestling match when we reached the front desk. I’m sure the desk clerk smirked at us as he handed me the key.
We got naked quickly. Cynthia was about five-five and nicely shaped with full round breasts and nipples that craved kisses and tonguing. Her light brown hair was perfectly matched by the thatch between her legs. A thatch I examined closely with both my eyes and my tongue. We rolled together on the bed and Cynthia crawled on top of me to slide down my pole with a long, deep sigh.
“You finally got there,” she whispered. “I knew you would. I’ve just been putting it off.”
“You could have had it the first week I came to work here,” I answered as we began moving together.
“What can I say? I like foreplay. And now it’s over.”
“We’ve barely begun.”
“I hope you can stay up all night,” she said. “Because tomorrow I have to go back to my husband.”
“You’re married?”
“Oh, yeah. And when I get home, he’s going to want to know about everything that’s been in my pussy.” Married. But she was riding my cock with abandon. And her husband… fuck. I pushed up into her.
“I’d better leave plenty of evidence then.”
Back to Cassie
I WONDERED IF THAT was what was happening with Cassie and me. I knew she could tease. I thought back to the fifteen-year-old I’d known so long ago. Stranger things had happened than two high school classmates getting together thirty or forty or fifty years later. I kind of understood. When you know someone in your teens or as a young adult then meet them years later, you tend to superimpose the person you knew back then on the person he or she has become. I think that’s why people who marry in that stage, and manage to overcome early hardships that plague any marriage, tend to stay together for years and years.
Forty years later, they still see the person they fell in love with, no matter how they’ve aged.
Maybe that’s not enough to hold things together. When I think of Treasure, I still think of the woman I knew when we were in our thirties—tight, trim, vivacious, fiery, willing. I knew she’d gained weight, begun to go gray, and sagged. But when I looked at her, even after having been divorced for two years, I saw that thirty-year-old beauty I’d fallen in love with.
I made phone calls and sent email messages until my computer battery gave out. I managed to reserve a decent condo in Scottsdale and contacted a couple friends who were already at Quartzsite. Then I headed back to the trailer, charging the computer and phone off the inverter as I drove. I was charged up, too. In just a few days, Alice would be with me. And soon, Cassie and Andy would join us at the Magic Circle.
I was finally ready to write the last chapter of Living Next Door to Heaven Book V: The Rock. Out there in the wilderness, camped where no one could see me, I finally let Hannah and Brian come together.
Life is easy when you can look back on it and write the story you wanted. But it doesn’t always work out so simply. I had a sudden inspiration for a sweet love story that I would include in the Pygmalion Revisited series. I’d let an old man talk to his deceased wife as he whittled a piece of wood in front of the fireplace. “Whittled Away” would be my holiday present to readers.
I hardly slept for two weeks as I prepared for Alice to visit.
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