American Backroads
Strange Bedfellows
25 July 2015
I LAY ON MY BED spooned against a pillow wondering if it was possible for me to be any more of an asshole. It wasn’t just Ella. It was Alice. And Angie. And all the other women I’d met on this ‘big adventure’ of mine. Did I even have room in my life for a ‘real’ relationship?
The pillow wasn’t answering. I couldn’t have heard it through my sobs even if it had.
I’d been two years on the road. I was thinking I needed to take it easy for a while. Maybe even hide. I got myself online and confirmed a reservation for Hawaii. I’d be on the Big Island for four months. If I liked it, maybe I’d stay longer. I bought a one-way ticket.
About the time I crossed the Mackinac Bridge, I started thinking seriously about book eight of Living Next Door to Heaven: Becoming the Storm. I’d just finished the feel-good book that included Hannah and Elaine winning a college television award and Cassie asking to be novia to Brian, Josh, and Mary. Life was perfect.
Except, I knew what came next. I looked at my notes and my outline and tried to decide how long I could delay. It wasn’t the first time I’d done this. When I introduced her in LNDtH Book 2, The Agreement, I knew Denise was going to die. I put it off. Not here. Not now. The group can’t take losing Hannah and Denise in the same book. Not yet. They just got together. Until Book 4, Deadly Chemistry. Just when Brian and Whitney were giving each other their virginity, it came to an end.
My characters are more real to me than real people.
I didn’t write for a week after that scene and I was so furious when it happened that I sent Brian to kill the son of a bitch that did this. A crime he could never confess to and that would haunt him forever.
My outline was clear, though. ‘Campus shooting. Someone dies. Brian’s ability saves others, but he is blamed.’ The big secret that he carried around with him could be exposed. And someone would die. Who?
I had a dozen stories in my library on SOL that I’d started reading. Some, I kept waiting for the author to post the next chapter of. Others I had to be in the right mood to get into. I sat beside my campfire in Mackinaw City and opened my tablet. Where did I leave off in Road Trip—Jim Mellon’s Erotic Journey Across America by Wolf. It was a pretty good story, but kept getting interrupted by my own journey. I’d just hit US Hwy 2 and planned to generally follow it all the way back to Seattle. I was a traveling man.
I opened the book and discovered I was just at the point where Jim came off Mackinac Island and headed west on Route 2. Apparently, the natives here never agreed on how to spell it. Or pronounce it. Perfect. For the next few days, we followed the same route, but as Jim headed south to Illinois, I headed west to Minneapolis.
A Long Time Ago: Chasing the Dream
I’d lived twenty-two years in Indiana. I’d heard that Kurt Vonnegut had once quipped that Indiana was a great place to be from. Far from. In the introduction to his book of short stories, Welcome to the Monkey House, Vonnegut talks about his grandfather having been a miserable sick old man and that, when he died, people commented that he was just as well off to be out of it. Vonnegut thought they meant out of Indiana. But he’s a favorite son in the Hoosier State.
While finishing my undergrad work, I was asked to speak at a church near Bippus, Indiana. It was at the intersection of two cornfields. A huge sign at the city limits proclaimed Bippus (population 127) as the home of Chris Schenkel. Chris was a bigtime sportscaster back in the sixties. We take our fame where we can find it.
But, of course, this is about leaving Indiana.
I would probably have stayed right there in Indy if it weren’t for Paula. She wanted to get going and get as far away from Indiana as she could. She said we needed to get our master’s degrees. Fine. Just pick a place and we’ll go. The list came back with three schools on it.
I’d driven through Texas before. I just flat said ‘no’ to Southern Methodist in Dallas. She could go, but I’d stay in Indiana. The director at the University of Washington sent us a very nice letter suggesting the theater department was not in very good shape at the moment and inviting us to apply to join her at the City University of New York. The Big Apple? That kind of scared two country kids from Indiana.
Then there was the University of Minnesota. Minneapolis was, according to our research, the second largest and fastest growing theater center in the country. It was a progressive and livable area. It seemed ideal.
The problem was I got accepted into the grad school and she didn’t.
We decided to go anyway and be there just in case the waitlist cleared. And as you might have guessed if you read Not This Time, we landed a job managing a newly renovated apartment building while we went to school. Free rent. I also landed a teaching assistantship that gave us both in-state tuition rates. And when the waitlist cleared, Paula was quickly admitted to the program.
There was always a little resentment, though, over that initial acceptance/rejection. It was surprising how often it surfaced during our two years of marriage and completion of the MA.
But even after Paula left for sunny California to do more grad work, Minneapolis was a good fit for me. I had work. I had lovers. I had potential. The affair with a student that ended my teaching career and started my marriage to Anabel Lee changed the dream.
Belle was beautiful and sexy and nineteen. She set about proving that she could have anything she wanted, including diamonds and a house in Uptown. The fact that I was expected to pay for her jewelry and house drove me into debt. It was a cinch that I wasn’t going to pay for it with my plays or with the first drafts of my first two novels. So, the dream got put on a shelf for a while. I’d come back to it again another time. Sometime after the bankruptcy and the second divorce.
Back to the Road
I lived in Minneapolis for about fifteen years. That was enough time to make some long-lasting friends. You’d think. And there were certainly some people who had been following my journey on Facebook and wanted to get together. CJ was one of those.
Without going into too much backstory, since we were never lovers, I’ll just say CJ became a co-worker in the second year of Belle. Belle was known for inviting her friends to bed with us and then going to sleep while the friend and I played. She’d even pushed me into Lynn’s arms at a Halloween party. In return, I turned a blind eye when she wanted to play with someone. I had few options.
But when CJ came to work at the company that kindly accepted my client base if I would come to work for them after Belle drove me bankrupt, her response was a little different. CJ had been a gymnast. CJ had won a beauty contest. CJ was a singer. CJ was an artist.
CJ was a threat.
“If you sleep with her, I’ll cut your balls off and ram them down your throat,” Belle said after our little company welcoming party. Sadly, when Belle split with me, CJ had already made a commitment and was pregnant.
We stayed friends, though. CJ had been at my reading when I hit Minneapolis on my book tour in 2011. My timing was bad again. She’d just gotten engaged and I hadn’t yet split with Treasure. But as soon as I hit town in July of 2015, my messenger app lit up with a request to have a drink.
We met at the Nicollet Island Inn, one of my favorite places for an elegant meal when I really wanted to impress a date way back when. But the two of us just sat overlooking the river with giant-size margaritas and talked.
It was bad timing again since I was single and she was very firmly married, but we had a good time catching up on everything that had happened over the past thirty years. Her daughter was getting married (too late for that one, too) and she was working with a small orchestra. We hadn’t had much time to catch up when I’d been through on my book tour and this was great.
“So, Ari, aren’t you ever going to settle down? I thought you and Treasure were forever,” she said. She’d attended my wedding to Treasure and we’d had a lot of jokes about her coming after me with a shotgun when she was pregnant. Never happened, sadly.
“Where would I settle, CJ? I have a very limited revenue stream that I live on. Not enough to live in either Seattle or Minneapolis. I thought about buying a place in Indiana, but there’s a difference between living in a depressed environment and being in a depressing environment. I haven’t been anyplace else long enough to develop any relationships,” I sighed. “I don’t seem to be attracting that type of woman.”
“So, it takes a woman for you to settle down?” she asked. I grinned.
“Why else?”
My campsite in Minneapolis was cramped. It was a minor miracle that there was anything closer than fifty miles. RV parks are almost as crowded and high priced in Minneapolis as they are around Seattle. I couldn’t believe what I was paying for this. I’d be camping in Walmart parking lots for the next month.
Once I was settled in, I called Becky the Reckless. I hadn’t talked to her since well before spring break.
“Ari? Is that you?”
“It is, beautiful. How are you doing?”
“Surprised to hear from you! But other than that, I’m doing great. Big things!”
“Want to have dinner and tell me about them?”
“You’re here?”
“I got settled into Minneapolis about an hour ago.”
“Minneapolis?”
“Yes. I said I’d check in when I got here. Don’t doubt my word.”
“Yeah, but that was in February. Um… Ari, I’m in St. Louis.”
“You’re where?”
“After graduation, I got a job at a little local newspaper in Winona. Turns out it’s owned by the same company that owns the big paper here. I put in for an associate editor job and got it last month,” she said excitedly. “Oh, Ari! I’m not there. I could so use some of your good loving!”
“I was thinking the same thing, precious. My timing seems to be way off lately.”
Nonetheless, Becky and I talked for a long time. She was wildly excited about her new job, even though it was little more than a copy editor position. Great journalists have to start somewhere.
“I don’t have time for a relationship right now,” she said. “If you were in St. Louis instead of Minneapolis, I’d find a way to work shorter hours while you were here and limp to work in the mornings. I don’t suppose you are coming south from Minneapolis, are you?”
“No. I’m headed up to the Boundary Waters and then across Route 2 back to Seattle. I’m going to spend the winter in Hawaii.”
“Does your trailer float?”
“No. I have to find a place to store it. I’m feeling pretty unanchored at the moment. I might not come back.” Fuck! I’d said it. It had been floating around in my mind for a long time, but I hadn’t put it in words. “I mean, like right away. I just need to see which way the wind blows when I wake up.” Fake cheerfulness.
“Ari, take care, okay? There are a lot of people here who love you.”
There was one friend I always put off calling, even though I loved her and we always had a good time when we got together. The thing was, if I called her first, I’d never get to anyone else.
“You finally got around to me,” she said in answering the phone. She must have caller ID.
“You’re the first person I thought of,” I responded.
“And the last one you called. I saw your notice on Facebook that you got into town two days ago,” she sighed. “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.”
“I seem to recall attending at least one of your weddings,” I laughed.
“I attended all three of yours. And you were the best part about mine,” she laughed.
“I’ve got two more days in Minneapolis. My time is yours.”
“Have you been to the tobacco shop?”
“No. Haven’t made it to Uptown yet.”
“It’s across the street from where it used to be. Get cigars. I’ll bring scotch. See you at seven tonight.”
That was it. I drove to Uptown and selected half a dozen cigars that cost me an arm and a leg. There was no one left at the cigar shop that I knew. It had been sold and the guys I used to play poker with had all gone their separate ways. I went to a big used CD store and found the four-CD set of Leonard Cohen’s Dublin Concert. I think it was the last concert he did before he died. Then I went back to the RV park and went to sleep. I figured this was the last rest I’d get until I left Minneapolis.
A Long Time Ago: Apples. Pears. Cu-cum-bers!
The last show I designed in my undergrad days wasn’t even in the theater. It was in the basement of a dorm that was about to be torn down in what had once functioned as a coffee house. There was a small stage in the corner of the room that was mostly for poetry reading and guitar music. We crammed three actresses, an entrance, and two painted walls into it. Bill gave us permission to use six lights and a portable control board from the studio.
Samantha directed. I only remember one of the actresses. Nikki played the role of the unbalanced mother, Beatrice, in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. Talk about type casting. I think it was the first time she’d appeared onstage. For four years, she’d hung around on the fringe of the theater group, helping backstage, but she’d never been under the lights. She was brilliant.
Paula was busy preparing for our wedding the following weekend, so I went to the cast party after I’d disposed of the cardboard set and taken the lights back to the studio. The cast party was held at the TeePee Restaurant, a favorite hangout for the theater. This was long before the days of smoking ordinances. As soon as Rick slid in beside Sam, he lit up. About three cigarettes later, Nikki nudged me and traded places to get a little farther away from the ashtray.
“Smokers should have to eat their butts,” she snarled. We were all quiet a second as it sank in and then burst out laughing. We had a couple drinks with our late-night dinners. I loved their chef’s salad because they put shredded beets on it. About 1:30 in the morning, Nikki leaned against me. “I’m sleepy. Take me home, Ari.” I paid my part of the bill and Nikki unstably leaned against me as we made it to my little Corvair.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll have you back to your dorm in no time.”
“No,” she said firmly. “Take me to your place. The dorm monitor can’t stumble drunkenly into the dorm. I’ll sleep it off and then go back.”
“Sure,” I said. I probably sighed a little, too. I’d end up sleeping on the floor.
I’ve mentioned my little flat above the Styrofoam factory someplace before, so I won’t repeat myself. It was Nikki’s first—and last—time to see it. She stood at the top of the stairs from which she could see the whole thing. She headed for the bathroom and I decided I’d fix myself a cup of coffee. I had instant for just this kind of occasion and found that if you used enough of it, it wasn’t bad. I’ll tell about Granny B some other time. The kettle had just started to whistle when Nikki came out of the bathroom. All she had on was her bra and panties.
Well, that was a relief. Last time she’d threatened to pull her pants down, I discovered she wasn’t wearing panties.
“Go on to bed. I’ll have a cup of coffee and sleep in the chair.”
“Don’t be stupid, Ari. Come to bed.” I turned toward her as her bra hit the floor. She shimmied out of her panties and pulled the covers back. She stood and faced me. In deference to the play, she’d dyed her hair red. Her bush was dark brown. Her breasts—I estimated them to be a little more than a handful, capped with dark, swollen nipples. “Well? Get undressed and come to bed. I want to be held. I’m a star.”
What had I gotten myself into?
I was a guy. Staring at a naked woman. No, she wasn’t svelte. Maybe a little overweight. Certainly not toned. But naked. I ignored the fresh cup of coffee and stripped as I approached the bed.
“Are you sure about this, Nikki?”
“I’ve never been held by a man at night,” she whimpered. “Never shown myself to anyone. Never felt… Damn it, Ari! Get in bed and hold me.” Ah fuck! I was stripped down to my briefs and started to get into bed. Nikki stopped me. “You’re still overdressed.” I rolled my eyes, but finished stripping and got into bed. Nikki backed up against me and pulled an arm around her. Then she relaxed and I could feel her breathing become more regular.
This wasn’t about sex. This was my lonely and slightly crazy friend needing to be held. I started to relax. Then Nikki took a deep breath, turned her head to the ceiling and called out, “Apples. Pears. Cu-cum-bers!” It was the line from the show that had gotten her character dubbed ‘Betty the Loon.’ In another few seconds, she was asleep.
I woke up a little chilled. I reached to pull the blanket up and couldn’t find it. I must have knocked it off in the middle of the night. Then I remembered Nikki. Just like a woman. She probably had the entire blanket cocooned around her. I managed to get my eyes open.
It wasn’t what I expected. The blanket and sheet were shoved down beneath my feet. I was lying on my back, stark naked. Seated tailor fashion, Nikki was beside me staring at my cock. She hadn’t noticed I was awake and try as I might, I couldn’t stop my cock from hardening under her gaze.
“Uh… Nikki…” She glanced at me and then back to my cock.
“It just gets big then little then big then little. You were asleep. What makes it do that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Fleeting thoughts. Dreams. Naked girls staring at me.”
“I couldn’t help it. I’ve never seen one in its natural state. I mean a live one.”
“It’s not separate from me, Nikki. I’m what’s alive. How long have you been staring at me?”
“Oh. An hour. I guess an hour and a half.” Just staring? “You’re awake now. Why’s it hard?”
“Um… because you’re naked next to me. I can see your breasts and your nipples. I can even see your pussy,” I said. She looked down at herself and started to close her legs, then opened them farther.
“Does that mean you want to fuck me?”
“Um… It means my body has prepared for sexual intercourse. It doesn’t mean my head has agreed.”
“I’d do it. If it wasn’t for Paula.” She flopped down on the bed beside me then rolled to hug me. “It was nice to be held last night. Thank you.” My head had finally gotten the message to my cock that it was not needed and it started to deflate. Nikki seemed no longer interested. “I’d fight her for you. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m OCD, paranoid schizophrenic, and manic depressive. I’d have to kill too many people and tie you up in the basement. I’m just not ready for the responsibility of a man.”
“You know that’s not how relationships work, don’t you, Nikki?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s like you said about your cock. My head knows but my body is slow at getting the message. I hope I didn’t fuck things up last night. You’ll still be my friend, won’t you?” she asked.
“Of course I will, Nikki.”
“You’re the only friend I’ve got.”
Paula and I got married the next weekend, graduated the weekend after that, and moved to Minnesota two weeks later. It’s funny that of all the people I knew in college, Nikki was the only person who made sure I had all her contact information. I mean, everything. She gave me three different phone numbers, two addresses, and the names and addresses of three people she said would always know where she was.
People forget how difficult it was to keep track of others, back in ‘the old days, when one moved.’ We didn’t have Internet and social media. We sent Christmas cards. We made calls from phones that had cords running into walls. And paid long distance charges. And we lost touch with people.
We didn’t have to worry about that with Nikki. Midway through the second year of our master’s programs she showed up on our doorstep. She’d just been through a nasty divorce from her husband of six months. Everything she owned was stuffed in the back of a rickety Ford Falcon station wagon.
“I had to leave town,” she said. “I tried to call you, but you don’t have an answering machine. Can I stay with you for a couple of weeks while I find a place to live and a job?”
Paula and Nikki weren’t close. I think Paula still blamed her for the whole ‘Ari for Campus Boyfriend’ campaign in college. But that had gotten rid of Georgia and no one was killed. It had also afforded me my one premarital glimpse of Paula naked. Paula would have preferred the scenario where Georgia was dead and Nikki was incarcerated for life. But we couldn’t turn away a college friend in need. And what’s a couple of weeks?
A couple months. Nikki seriously underestimated how long it would take her to find a job. Really, the most serious difficulty for Paula and me was that we had to confine our fighting to the bedroom and not go yelling through the whole apartment. Nikki quietly occupied the eight-by-eight room at the front of our little apartment where I’d originally set up my drafting table for designing scenery. It wasn’t like we had a ton of furniture. The table fit fine in a corner of the living room.
The downside of confining our fights to the bedroom was that the bedroom became a place to fight rather than fuck. By the time Nikki got a job as a photographer for school pictures, I was spending almost as many nights on the sofa in the living room as in bed. But she did move out and found her own place. And when Paula left, Nikki was still around as my long-time friend and sometimes confidante, but never as a lover.
She got along well with Anabel Lee—maybe because they were both crazy. She was even our wedding photographer. Nikki would occasionally remark that Belle needed to have her meds adjusted. I knew Belle wasn’t on any meds. She considered her psychosis to be normal. After I’d met her mother, I agreed.
“Ari, she’s going to leave you,” Nikki said one night as we sat on the screened front porch of Belle’s and my home. We were practicing a new habit—sitting up late at night smoking cigars and drinking scotch. Belle had long since gone to bed. Nikki was not on the list of people Belle invited to share our bed. Nikki’s apartment was across the street.
“Yeah, probably,” I said. I stretched out my legs and took a long drag on my cigar, watching the smoke wind upward as I slowly blew it out of my mouth. Smoke, yes. Inhale, no. Safe, right? “I sure can pick them.”
“No kidding. She’s already started packing things. Nothing significant. Nothing you’d miss if you weren’t thinking about it. But there are neatly labeled boxes already in the attic,” Nikki said. “She got me to help her move a couple.”
“She’s just storing things away that we aren’t using right now.”
“Mmmhmm. Why are you staying with her? Why don’t you tell her to just go?”
“I can’t. You know, I promised. I married her. And I’m not sure what I’ll do without her, but as long as she’ll stay with me, I’ll be here.”
A few days after it finally blew up and Belle moved everything she could transport out of the house. Nikki brought a bottle of Macallan twelve-year-old and half a dozen cigars on Friday night.
“Hope you didn’t have a big date planned for tonight,” Nikki said. “I can’t drink all this and smoke all these by myself.”
“You planning to get me drunk and take advantage of me?” I asked. “I might not be as polite this time as I was last time.”
“By the time I’m done with you tonight, I don’t expect ‘polite’ will enter into the equation. ‘Able’ might be a better question,” Nikki said. We settled into some serious drinking and moaning. By the end of the first cigar, my head was light. At the end of the second, I was crying and telling Nikki how much I loved Belle and couldn’t believe she left me. By the time the third was a dead ash, Nikki was supporting me up the stairs to put me to bed.
I woke up naked, as usual. My head was pillowed against Nikki’s bare breast. That was not usual. It was nice. I thought she was a little thinner than when I’d last seen her breasts. Her dark nipple was an inch away from me and I was just fascinated with how it seemed to go from soft to hard while I watched it. I lifted my lips and sucked gently on the turgid nipple. Nikki moaned. I moaned. And ran to the bathroom, just in time to offer the remains of last night’s scotch to the porcelain god. Repeatedly. How much did I drink last night?
When I finally felt like I could stand and walk back to the bedroom, I found Nikki dressed and waiting for me. It looked like fresh sheets on the bed.
“You got dressed,” I said. Could I be more obvious?
“I didn’t come here to get laid,” she said.
“Why…” I started. “Why did you come over and get me drunk?”
“Two reasons. First, you were never going to open up and talk while you were sober. Don’t bother to contradict me. You weren’t. Second, I figured I could show you what real pain was like. Now you can’t dwell on the imagined hurt of Belle.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Get in bed, Ari. You aren’t going to be fit for a few more hours. I’ll check on you tonight.”
“Thank you, Nikki. You’re a real friend.”
“There is one thing, though,” she said. “You know Paula and I still exchange Christmas cards. We’re not close, but we keep in touch. Do you mind if I don’t keep in touch with Anabel Lee? She really needs drugs.”
“Nikki,” I said crawling into bed. I realized I was still naked. “I’d appreciate it if you never mention her name to me again. Okay?”
“Agreed. There’s water and aspirin on the nightstand when you think you can handle it.”
Nikki adored Treasure.
For good reason. Not that Treasure was perfect, but when she’d have a little blow-up and I didn’t blow up back at her, she’d smile and say, “I need to write another thank you note to Paula and Belle.” Believe me, nothing that Treasure could throw at me came close to what I’d lived through. And she simply accepted Nikki as my oldest and dearest friend. As my friend, she was Treasure’s friend.
“I’d like to do your wedding photography as my gift to you,” Nikki said one evening when we’d all gone out to dinner. Treasure looked at me and then turned back to Nikki.
“Nicolette, I love your photography and thank you for offering this precious gift. If that’s really what you want to do, we’ll accept it gladly,” Treasure said. She was so good at handling things like this. “That being said, we were thinking you would be a member of the wedding party. Wouldn’t you rather do that?”
“You want me to be a bridesmaid?” she asked in wonder.
“No,” I said. “I’d like you to be my best friend. And no, I won’t call you best man.” I’d truly never seen Nikki speechless. She launched herself across the table and embraced Treasure. Hmm. I thought I’d asked her.
“I’m happy to be Ari’s best man. Or friend, if he wants to call me that. But, Treasure, you will never have to worry about me. I’ve never had a best friend before. I will never betray the trust you are showing in me.”
And then, twenty-some years later, Treasure and I got divorced.
Back to Nikki
Nikki knocked on my trailer door at six-thirty.
“Nice digs,” she laughed as I showed her in. “You must get lost in here.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Lost to the world.”
“God, it’s good to see you, Ari,” she said. She set her package on the table and turned to give me a big hug. We held it a lot longer than people hold the hug of a normal friend. It was almost as long as a daughter hug. Maddie loved to hug me and just pretend she was a little girl being held by her daddy. I loved it, too. But Nikki was my oldest and dearest friend. She’d seen me through three weddings and three divorces, through laughter and tears, through the deaths of my parents, the birth of my child, and had never missed being present for a birthday that ended in zero.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get back here on my first swing around the country. It was that trip on US 20 that I wanted to make all my life. I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking of friends,” I said.
“You went through Dallas and posted that you could just turn north, follow I-35, and be in Minneapolis in two days. I sat in my room screaming ‘Do it!’ Then you turned south and went to Corpus Christi. I considered packing up my car and driving down to surprise you. But you’re a moving target and I had a wedding to photograph that weekend,” she said.
“Well, we’d both have been surprised,” I laughed.
“Don’t tell me you have a girlfriend already! Where do you keep her?” Nikki opened the bathroom door to see if someone was hiding. “Damn, now that’s small!”
“That’s exactly what she said the first time she saw it,” I laughed. “I picked up Angie and we traveled together for three months. Let’s say she was more like a ward than a girlfriend. I took her on a tour of the Southwest.”
“A ward? How old was this girl?”
“She was a very innocent twenty-three-year-old.”
“I’d bet a nickel she wasn’t as innocent at the end of three months.”
“You know I don’t gamble.”
“I don’t want to know how many women you’ve had since you divorced Treasure. I want to know how you’re doing, Ari. Sometimes your Facebook posts are a little cryptic.”
“Let’s take a drink and a smoke outside,” I said. “I don’t smoke in the trailer or the truck.” We went outside in the humid Minnesota summer evening. It was the second of August and the RV park had sprayed for mosquitoes the night before, so it was reasonably pleasant to sit under the shade of the awning and light up the cigars. Nikki had brought a bottle of my favorite single malt, Cardhu, and poured us each a healthy shot.
We were older—supposedly wiser—now than we’d been the last time she debriefed me on the end of a relationship. We didn’t just guzzle the scotch. I had sparkling water. We even had snacks. I taught her the trick I’d learned in Hot Springs, Arkansas about having a square of dark chocolate to temper the smoke when the cigar was half burnt and turned harsh. Then we had more dark chocolate because it went so well with the scotch.
And I’d had two years to heal, so even when there were a few tears to shed, it wasn’t the emotional cataclysm that accompanied the incident more than twenty-five years ago.
“Ari, I’ll always be your friend, first and foremost, but…” Nikki said. I cringed. I hate hearing that qualifier. Nikki plowed on. “But do you mind terribly if I stay friends with Treasure? She’s one of the only people I know who has always treated me like a person and not a sicko. You know she paid for my last two trips out to see you for your birthdays?”
“How you two managed to surprise me both times is beyond me.”
“Oh, we worked on it pretty hard. But, Ari. The question.”
“Nikki, I am delighted that you want to stay friends with Treasure. I’m friends with her. Our divorce wasn’t filled with anger and resentment. I left soon enough to break the cycle of bitterness that I was headed into. We get along better now than we did the last two years of our marriage. Be friends. Please.”
She smiled and reached to hold my hand as we finished our last cigar.
“More?” she asked, holding up the bottle.
“No. I want to enjoy the drink and the buzz without being sick,” I said.
“I should probably go home now.”
“Are you sure you’re able to drive?” I asked as she stood unsteadily. “We’ve been talking for six hours, but we’ve had a shot of scotch… well, too many. Let me call you a cab. I’ll bring your car to you tomorrow.”
“It’s after midnight. I don’t want a cab, even if you could get one.”
“Then crash here,” I said without thinking what that would mean.
“Hmm. Like old times,” she sighed. “Okay.”
We cleaned up outside. Inside I found an unopened toothbrush from my last dentist visit and handed it to her. Nikki was obsessive about brushing her teeth. I had the fan going and the windows open, which seemed to make the interior comfortable without having the air conditioning turned on.
Nikki came out of the bathroom naked and tossed her clothes onto the dining seat. My mouth fell open.
“I was never that pretty to start with,” she said when she saw me staring. “There’s just a little more sag now. Being naked is my best defense against sexual advances.”
“Nikki, I’m not going to…”
“Oh, get ready for bed. You still can’t tell when I’m joking. Get naked and come and hold me. It’s a tradition.” We both laughed and I saw her crawl up into my bed as I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth.
When I got to bed, Nikki was sprawled out enough that there was no way not to touch her when I arrived. She turned and cuddled into my arm, laying her head on my shoulder. We relaxed, both of us comfortable in our skins, even with our skin touching. I’d almost dozed off when Nikki sighed.
“I would like to have sex again,” she whispered. I became more alert. I didn’t think either of us was particularly aroused. One drink loosens a person up. Several drinks kills the libido.
“Nikki, I don’t think we’ve ever had sex,” I said.
“Oh, I didn’t mean with you specifically. I just meant in general. You know. One more time before I die,” she said.
“You’re not planning to die soon, are you?”
“No. But the longer I wait the less likely it becomes,” she said. “Of course, if it happens to be you, that would be okay, too, I suppose.” I chuckled.
“Glad to be considered as an option,” I said. I kissed her on the head and she lifted her face for a kiss on the lips. It didn’t get passionate. We settled back down and went to sleep.
Nikki crawled over me in the morning to use the bathroom. It was just daylight, so we couldn’t have been asleep more than four hours. She didn’t try to lift up and not disturb me as she got out of bed. It was more like she intentionally dragged her body across mine—not quite putting all her weight on me, but making firm contact from her head to her toes. I turned my head and watched her sixty-plus-year-old butt disappear into the bathroom. I felt a stirring in my groin that I reprimanded firmly.
“Don’t forget to brush your teeth,” she said when I passed her on my way to my turn in the john. She was always so obsessive about teeth brushing. But I figured most of the toothpaste taste would be gone by the time I got coffee made.
When I returned, Nikki held out her arms to me and I joined her back in bed again. She sniffed at my breath.
“Minty fresh,” she said. Then she kissed me. All women kiss differently. Nikki’s was firm and direct and when she was ready to go deeper, her tongue touched my lips to let me know. I believe it was the first time in thirty-five years of friendship that we’d ever touched our tongues together. It was good.
I’m not saying that bells were ringing and an angel got his wings, but even in the intimate caress of our tongues, we were friends sharing at a level that could be as deep as our friendship. It was good enough that I also let my hand drift up to cup her breast. She pulled away from my lips to look me in the eye and for a moment, I was afraid I had gone too far.
“We have unfinished business,” she said. “I, Nicolette Duval, being of reasonably sound mind, not under the influence of drink or drugs, and naked in your bed, give my consent to you, Aroslav, to ravish my body in sexual abandon. Or at least to make love to me. Please?” I looked into my old friend’s eyes and knew there was nothing within my power that I wouldn’t do for her. She’d quit trying after her second failed marriage and as far as I knew had not had a man since. I thought what my life would be like if I hadn’t had sex in twenty years. Even the despair I felt after five years of abstinence with Treasure. I kissed Nikki and let her know I agreed.
Her hand went straight to my cock, but I was no more ready than she was. I sensed that she was disappointed when she didn’t find it hard, but when I dipped my finger into her bush, I found she was barely moist. Kissing wasn’t getting the job done and I started working my way down her body, sucking her nipples, and placing kisses all over her round soft tummy.
“Ari! Are you really going to do that? Oh, my god, Ari! Really?” She might not have believed it if I’d said yes, but her legs parted willingly when I worked my way between them.
“Nikki? Do you get pleasure from sex?” I asked as I licked up the tiny slit that presented itself to me.
“Of course!” she said immediately. “Why else would I do it?”
“How do you pleasure yourself?”
“I don’t really. I mean, I know how and all, but I never got much of a thrill from it. Why are you asking questions? Is that normal?”
I licked up the slit again and looked at her opening. I’d never looked at an adolescent girl’s pussy, but I’d seen my share of adult women. What I was looking at was… immature. There were hardly any labia. Her outer lips were hidden beneath her pubic hair, but by touch, they didn’t seem at all what I expect from an aroused woman. When I parted them, I saw a small gathering of moisture around her vagina, but for the first time since Deb taught me where it was in high school, I couldn’t find a woman’s clit.
As I licked, Nikki’s juices began to flow more freely, and I could see her vaginal opening spread and prepare for intercourse, but it took a long time to find the seat of her pleasure.
It was like a subterranean zit. You know, the kind that hurts and swells but never seems to break the surface of the skin. Or is that just me? Regardless, there was simply no hood to push back and reveal the little bump I could finally feel with my tongue. I decided to focus on it anyway and felt it swell slightly beneath the skin. Nikki moaned.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’ll give you the rest of the day to do it. I can’t catch my breath. I might… I might be having an asthma attack. Ari?” I heard a whining intake of breath and looked up to see Nikki’s eyes wide open in something approaching alarm. I thought she might be having an asthma attack. I’d been with her before when she had one. I started to raise my head and both her hands grabbed me and forced me back down to the little bump.
And then Nikki screamed.
This was not what I considered an ordinary orgasmic scream. This was like a ‘help, I’m being murdered’ scream. It was only about six in the morning and I could imagine neighbors in the tightly packed RV park rushing to pound on my door or sending the police. Nikki fell back on the bed, releasing my head and I pulled myself up beside her. She was panting and gasping for breath. Her hand flailed, pointing to her clothes.
“Inhaler,” she gasped. I scrambled to her purse and tore into it to find the inhaler and hand it to her. She gasped and sucked in a second dose. Then she clutched me to her as her breathing gradually normalized. She continued to shake, though, and I realized she was sobbing against my chest.
“Nikki, are you all right, my dear friend? I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said.
“I… I thought I was having orgasms.”
“I think you just did.”
“I’m over sixty years old. I should have known this by now!”
“My god! Nikki that can’t have been your first!”
“I’ve never felt anything like that. They felt good before. But I couldn’t see why everyone was so crazy about them. Now I know. Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Sweetheart, you’ve been married twice. Didn’t either Arnie or Jack go down on you?” I asked. I couldn’t believe this. Nikki had always had a kind of sexual note in her humor and talked like she knew what was what. Sixty-plus years old and she’d never experienced this?
“Jack did. It hurt if he didn’t get me lubricated. But as soon as I was wet, we fucked. Arnie never cared if it hurt. It’s why we got divorced. The goddamn bastards! Why didn’t they tell me?” she wailed.
“Oh, my poor, poor baby. Did you think that was what I was going to do? That I’d hurt you?”
“I don’t know. I know that if you’d done this to me that night in college, I’d have killed Paula. I would never let you go.”
Now, the bells and sirens started going off in my head. I loved Nikki, but I wasn’t going to settle down with her. I was going to hurt her worse than her husbands had. But she wasn’t finished.
“It’s too late now. I know I’m not your lover. I know I’ll never be your one and only. I’d go even crazier in your claustrophobic little hovel. You’d be miserable in mine. But, Ari, I’m wet now. Can you please make love to me?”
My penis was a limp noodle as she reached for it and began to squeeze a little too hard. I winced.
“Easy. Nikki, I came to bed with you to make love. I’m not going to stop now unless you tell me to. You know I can’t be the love of your life. But I’m your friend for life. Just don’t squeeze so hard. I just lost it for a little while as we were talking. It will come back in its own time.”
“I don’t know anything! Tell me, Ari. What do I need to do?” she pled.
“You need to let me up so I can go to the bathroom,” I laughed. “Then we can start again. I want to give you another.”
“Another? I can have another? I’m going to die!” she screamed.
“I don’t think so. We’ll keep your inhaler nearby.” I got up and padded to the bathroom. Nikki kept moaning on the bed.
“Brush your teeth! I want to kiss some more.”
I did as directed, and while I was in there, I popped a pill. I didn’t want to take a chance that I’d disappoint her. Her next orgasm might not have been as powerful as the first, but it was still more than her asshole husbands had ever given her. No wonder she’d given up on men after her last marriage. I’m surprised it lasted two years.
And she was tighter than any woman I’d ever slept with. I didn’t last long when I finally entered her. But… better living through chemistry was my motto. I was happy when she decided to go down on me and even stayed hard while she brushed her teeth so we could kiss while we fucked some more.
“Thank you, Ari,” she whispered the next morning as we cuddled together. We’d dressed only long enough to grill steaks for dinner. As soon as we were back inside, she was naked and I followed suit. “You are truly my friend and you have given me the greatest gift any friend could give. I know you’ll hit the road tomorrow and I have a studio shoot this afternoon. Then I have a meeting tonight that I’m presenting slides at. I don’t know when we’ll be in the same place at the same time again. But I hope there will be another time, even if I’m old and gray.”
“I can’t promise to be here when you need me,” I said. “I’m going off to Hawaii in a couple months and I’m thinking of going around the world from there. You know Hawaii is halfway to Japan? But if you want to be my lover when I come back through Minneapolis, I can’t think of anything better.”
“Don’t count on it. Now that I know what I’ve been missing, I’m going to find a man who can give it to me. I don’t care if he’s an old codger in a nursing home.”
“You know what my friend Jack said?”
“The guy you used to play poker with?”
“Yeah. When I was over at the tobacco shop, I found out he died a few years ago. I didn’t even know. But I’ll always remember what he and John said. ‘Even if you can’t cut the mustard, you can still lick the pot.’ It shocked those of us who couldn’t imagine ever being unable to get an erection,” I laughed.
“How gross!” she giggled. “Or maybe not. Um… Would you mind doing it again?”
Mind? Oh, hell no.
I talked to Nikki again before I left the next morning. We didn’t have much more to say since we’d talked and made love for the better part of two days. It was a good thing I didn’t know where her asshole exes lived, though, or I’d be writing this from prison. At least Minnesota is one of the civilized states with no death penalty. But I guessed I wouldn’t get to test it.
“One thing, Ari,” Nikki said before we hung up. “That girl in Montana, and anyone else you make love to… make sure they know. Make sure they know how wonderful it can be. Don’t ever be an asshole, Ari. I’ll hunt you down.”
I believed her.
My first stop was Bemidji, Minnesota for a few days. That’s where I picked up US Route 2 westward again. Before I struck out, though, I had a stop to make at the headwaters of the Mississippi, Lake Itasca.
A Few Years Ago: Crossing the Rubicon
I knew Treasure was unhappy. There just didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it. I tried.
I’d been laid off in the high-tech industry when I was nearly sixty years old. There was no question about age being a factor. It was also a factor in my being unable to find a job again. With each month that passed, I was falling further behind the current technology. I’d started a part time publishing business and made a little money off the authors I published, but not much. The same was true of my own book; sales had already reached their peak and were tapering off. I estimated that I needed to have fifty books in the market before I could call the business a success. I was dipping into carefully set-aside retirement savings to keep up with the mortgage and health insurance, which cost about the same.
Money was an issue. Health was an issue. Family was an issue.
Treasure’s mother died and her stepfather was not doing well. Both were well into their nineties and Treasure had been flying back to Minneapolis four to six times a year to be with them, attend funerals, see to the estate, and care for her stepdad.
The flaw in my upbringing was the concept that if I didn’t have enough money, I wasn’t working hard enough. Publishing, like design, had become a commodity. I found myself competing against the perception that anyone could publish his own book and be an instant millionaire. My prices for editing and designing a book were falling so I could stay competitive. Agents, used to dealing with mainstream commercial publishers, drove harder bargains for their authors, even though I was often the last alternative for them.
My novel, The Gutenberg Rubric, had won an award and I determined to make its release a big splash. It was the most commercial of anything I’d written and the market seemed ripe for intellectual thrillers in the vein of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. I was working more hours than I had in the stressful high-tech industry and earning less than I had as a teenager.
And Treasure was unhappy. Did I mention that? Every conversation we had was either about where the money was going to come from for Maddie’s college or the electric bill. Not every conversation. We also discussed, in detail, whether the proper use of ‘couple’ was as a noun or an adjective. Or whether ‘gotten’ was an acceptable past participle of ‘to get’ or if we should only use the traditional ‘got.’ At one time, those conversations would have meant that we were engaging together in something that we both enjoyed. Now, they were simply the only thing we still had in common.
Treasure told me that while she was in Minneapolis, she was helping an old friend who had a drinking problem. An old boyfriend. She still cared about him. Still loved him. There was nothing between them, but she had spent a few nights at his house—in the guest room. And he was meeting her at the airport on her next trip so she could go to Lake Itasca and walk across the headwaters of the Mississippi. She’d always wanted to do that.
I believed her, of course. I didn’t think David, in his current state, had the capacity to break through her post-menopausal ‘dryness.’ I doubted that he was physically capable of sex. But emotionally, he was a threat.
When she returned, Treasure was relieved.
“I walked right into the water and waded across the headwaters of the Mississippi,” she said. “The water was cold! But I did it. I walked across the Mississippi. And when I got across the river, I took off that ratty old pair of running shoes that I’ve been hauling around for years and threw them in the trash. They just represented a lot of old baggage I’ve been carrying around, and now it’s gone.”
A sitcom years ago had a funny line. For most sitcoms, one funny line is enough to make a show successful, but whatever this one was, it didn’t last a whole season. In it, a divorced woman asked the divorced man she was dating, ‘When did your marriage start to go downhill?’ He answered, ‘It didn’t. It was uphill all the way.’
Our slope—in either direction—had just gotten steeper.
Back to Minnesota
I stood on the banks of the Mississippi looking out at Lake Itasca. Kids played on the rocks where the water flowed out of the lake into the twenty-foot wide stream that became the 2,340-mile Muddy Mississippi—the river that divided America East from West.
There’s also a narrow little footbridge across the channel. I crossed over and then crossed back. I didn’t get my feet wet because I didn’t have a spare pair of shoes I could throw away. My relationship was already in that trashcan. I did splash some of the water into my face. Then I turned my back on it and left for Bemidji, Paul Bunyan, Babe the Blue Ox, and the road west.
Fargo Fucking North Dakota
I did a seminar years ago in Fargo, North Dakota. Or as my protagonist in Not This Time would often repeat, Fargo Fucking North Dakota. My host worked for a sugar company up there and regaled me of his move from the East Coast to Fargo. His wife had no choice but to let him find a place to move their family to. He found a nice house in a community called Oak Grove. That night he called his wife and told her about it. ‘It sounds lovely,’ she said. ‘But what can you see from the kitchen window?’ He sighed and said, ‘I think that’s Helena, Montana.’ Look at a map. Grand Forks is even worse. You can see a horizon that is as distant as looking out at the ocean.
Did you ever look at a North Dakota license plate? It calls itself the ‘Peace Garden State.’ I’d never paid attention to that until I spotted the International Peace Garden that spans the border between the US and Canada. I turned north at Rugby, the geographical center of North America, and camped in this impressive park.
According to the North Dakota Government website, “The US Geological Survey does not recognize the geographic center of North America (or that of the 50 States or the conterminous United States) as exact locations. The reason for this is that there is no generally accepted definition of a geographic center and no reliable way of determining it. Consequently, there are probably as many geographic centers of a given area as there are definitions. Both Douglas (1930) and the US Geological Survey define the geographic center of an area as ‘…that point on which the surface of the area would balance if it were a plane of uniform thickness…’ This point of balance is the area’s center of gravity.” Okay. If the whole continent was as flat as North Dakota, this would be the center.
The Peace Garden
You enter the park between the customs stations for the US and Canada. Of course, you have to go through customs when you exit the park, no matter which direction you turn. I spent four days in relative isolation, meaning I had no cell service and thus, no Internet. The gardens are beautiful. The monuments are stunning. It was the only place I’ve ever visited where I could stand with my feet in two different countries and look down miles of straight mowed border with stone cairns marking the border every mile.
I also met a fan who offered to take me on a little tour around this remote area of the US. Who knew I would find a fan in this isolated area? One site Doug took me to was an old stone church, Swedish Zion Lutheran Church. There were no regular services there, but the doors were always unlocked and the building and grounds were cared for by volunteers. It was quite beautiful. As we looked over the cemetery, another car pulled up and two women came toward us.
“Do you have people buried here?” one asked. We explained that I was merely touring the country. But the woman kept going. “That one over there was my great uncle. He was the first one buried here. He helped build the church and after the first service he went out to get his wagon and a team backed over him. Killed him on the spot and they buried him here. His daughter—I think that makes me a first cousin once or twice removed—didn’t like it here. Claimed there were too many trees. So, she moved to Montana.”
There were trees in the cemetery. They were the only ones I could see from where I stood. North Dakota is the number one bean producer in the US and bean plants are not very tall.
Three days later, I stood at a rest area in Northern Montana. They don’t call this ‘Big Sky’ country for nothing. As I looked out miles across the horizon, I could count both trees.
Skin to the Wind
“You’re here! I can’t believe you actually came for me!”
“Do you still want to go with me, my beautiful muse?”
“Oh, hell yeah. I’ve got my backpack ready. Where are we going?”
“National Skinny Dipping Day is next Saturday. Let’s go get nekkid.”
“Skin to the wind. I love you, Ari!”
Alice ran inside to grab her backpack and we were on the road.
If we’d never made love… If I’d never seen her naked… If I’d just picked her up someplace along the road, I’d still want Alice to travel with me.
We’d met up a few times, now. I met her at the strip club. She joined me at Yellowstone. We camped at Quartzsite. But we’d never just traveled together from site to site to site. It was great. We boondocked near Glacier National Park. We saw a slope populated with mountain goats to our right as the road (and the railroad) made a big curve around the southwest corner of the park.
“Look! Ari, a mystery spot. Let’s go!” she squealed. We went into the optical illusion tourist trap and had a blast taking pictures of each other standing on walls and watching water flow uphill. When we were finished, we went next door for huckleberry pancakes with huckleberry syrup and huckleberry coffee. Maybe it wasn’t that bad, but it was close.
We worked our way across Idaho and into Oregon, usually driving a few hours or until we saw someplace interesting and stopping for the night. I showed her one of my favorite spots, Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. Sometimes we were at an official campground and sometimes we were just someplace that looked like we could pull off the road for a few hours. I truly despise WallyWorld, but they almost always welcome RVers to overnight in their parking lots. Better yet are truck stops where we pulled in between a couple eighteen-wheelers and ate with the drivers in the café. They serve some pretty spectacular food in those. And good coffee.
And at night…
At the head of my bed sits a small bronze statue of a woman’s face, wrapped in a veil or perhaps emerging from a seashell. It sits on a black marble base about six inches high. The bronze was done in Minneapolis by an artist named Richard Budda and, sadly, I have been unable to track down the artist in the intervening years. This bronze has watched over me for nearly forty years and was among the two pieces of artwork that Belle did not dare strip from my home when she moved out.
Each night, I touch her and say, “Goodnight, Goddess,” before I turn out the light that illuminates her. In the morning, I turn on the light and greet her. When I am ready to move, I tuck her between my pillows so she won’t be thrown around when the trailer bounces. When I set up camp, she is the first thing returned to her place of watchfulness over my tiny domain. She is the only piece of artwork in my trailer. She is my most treasured possession. My goddess.
Alice is my goddess come to life. Galatea to my Pygmalion.
When we are in the truck, she cuddles next to me, having learned from Ella that she can tuck her long legs up onto the seat next to her and that I take breaks frequently enough that neither of us feel cramped. When we walk places, she holds my hand, sometimes swinging it back and forth like a child. When we are camped, she shares my camp chair in front of the fire, curled in my lap, sometimes under a blanket. If I have ignored her by writing intensely for a while, she wiggles in beside me and sometimes holds one of my hands so I must type one-handed. When we close and lock the door at night, her clothes come off before I have even turned on a light. And when we slip into bed, I worship her. She is my living breathing goddess.
Like any deity, she has demands she makes on me. I must take time to focus on her. I must feed her and make sure we are camped someplace at least every other day where there are showers. I indulge her whims for places to see, interesting things to eat, and even the music we listen to in the truck. Sometimes she irritates me by insisting that I pay attention to her instead of ‘things I really need to do’.
I have several writer friends on Facebook who post pictures of their cats perched on their keyboards or their dogs lying on their manuscripts. I know how they feel.
Several Years Ago: Petting
I was on some pretty serious drugs due to a back injury that was taking too long to heal. Vicodin, naproxen, and Vioxx to keep me from screaming. There wasn’t anything I could do but lie flat on my back until the broken ribs and bruised muscles healed and my spine got back into alignment. The doctor good-naturedly warned me not to drive, operate heavy machinery, or sign any contracts until I was off the pain-killers. Not much chance of that. I couldn’t stand long enough to operate the coffee pot.
Funny he didn’t mention anything about agreeing to my wife and daughter adopting a rescued greyhound. He was a red brindle and when I first met him while sitting in the recliner with an icepack on my back, he looked me straight in the eye. My first thought was of how much poop this beast was going to generate. They say that greyhounds are the oldest refined breed of dog in the world. There are pictures of them with Egyptian Pharaohs. Valiant Endeavor, his track name, had an old soul and I could see it gazing into my eyes.
Good drugs, right?
Treasure and Maddie claimed Val as their dog and did a pretty good job of training him. Greyhounds do not naturally sit. Getting him to lie down meant having him sprawled out on his side with legs straight out. The musculature formation demanded for racing simply did not allow for sitting, crouching, or even rolling over. In fact, we discovered the dogs are punished in their race training for taking any of those positions.
When I was mostly healed, of course, I needed to get daily exercise and what better exercise is there than walking a large dog. And cleaning up his poop. And feeding him. Though Treasure and Maddie loved him, Val and I bonded and I became his.
He often lay beside me while I worked. He reminded me that I needed a cup of coffee late in the morning so we could walk through the drive-through at the local independent coffee shop where I would get an Americano and Val would get a biscuit. The baristas loved him and he loved them. He even liked sticking his face in the empty coffee cup to slurp out the remains.
When Val died—or as pet-owners are fond of saying, ‘crossed the Rainbow Bridge’—Maddie took his collar and tags. She wore them herself for nearly a year. New rescues came in the fall. I still did a lot of dog-walking and poop-scooping. But I’ll never personally own another pet. I still get tears in my eyes when I think of Val.
Back to Alice
I would never think of Alice as a pet, but we did a lot of petting. We didn’t just jump in bed to have sex. She loved to kiss and seemed to have no goal attached to her kisses. I loved to caress her breasts, but unless we’d truly committed to a sex act, I didn’t do any squeezing and pinching and pulling. Petting her back and her butt was just as pleasurable for both of us. We’d often fall asleep without going any further than kissing and petting, our lips just inches apart.
Sometimes we woke up in the same position. Sometimes, amazingly, we woke with our sex already joined. We’d look at each other with an expression of surprise that we were making love. And, of course, sometimes we pushed each other. I might wake her by sucking her nipples with my hand between her legs. Or I would awaken to find her posting on my cock nearly to her own fulfillment before I fully realized we were making love. There were even times that we camped and as soon as the bed was clear, jumped on each other in passionate lovemaking.
But for both of us, the time spent petting each other was the best we could ever imagine.
We swam naked at a nudist park with about 150 other fun-loving people on National Skinny Dipping Day. The summer attracts a younger crowd to nudist parks because they can get vacation time off. Alice felt less like a youngster among old folks than at places like Quartzsite. Then we worked our way up the Oregon and Washington coast to Seattle. I had to go through all my annual medical rigmarole and Alice had to fly back to Montana for school. It was a sad parting. When we made love the night before she left, we coupled and tried to see how long we could just stay connected, moving only enough to keep me hard and in her. It’s a pretty amazing feeling to just be there without driving toward completion. And it’s harder to do than you think. Even if you don’t orgasm, eventually you start to soften. When that happened, we changed ends and used our mouths to continue worshiping each other.
“I’ve booked my ticket,” she said as we stood kissing each other outside the security line at SeaTac. “I’ll arrive at Hilo on the 19th of December and I have to fly back on the 10th of January. You’re sure this cabin is going to even hold two people?”
“I’ll know for sure when I get there. And Maddie is already booked to join me for a week at Thanksgiving.” We kissed again.
“Four months apart again,” Alice sighed. “And in the meantime, you’ll find a little Hawaiian hula girl to keep you entertained. Make her a cute one. I’ll want to play, too.”
“There’s not a chance that I’ll hook up with anyone while I’m on the Big Island. I’m going to focus on getting this book done. I’ve got half a dozen other stories I want to get written.”
“And I haven’t let you concentrate on writing the whole time I’ve been with you,” she sighed.
“You know, you are the only excuse I consider valid for not writing,” I laughed. “But at the same time, you are an inspiration to me. Don’t forget, sweetheart, no matter where in the world I might roam, my heart is in your keeping.”
“I’ll bring it back to visit you on occasion,” she said. We kissed one more time and then she got in line to pass through security. I watched until she turned toward the D Concourse and waved. Then she was gone again.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
