'I have to get back to work now,' I muttered, and walked off.
On the way back I found myself thinking, before I could catch myself, maybe this will work out, after all. If that bulge in his pants meant anything he's got to be very well hung. Visions of eight or nine inches of rock-hard cock jutting out of a thatch of curly black hair danced in my mind. I could just picture spoonfuls of hot, sticky cum squirting out of it into my mouth, running my tongue over the swollen head of it, swallowing every drop.
No, no, I said to myself. I've got to stop looking at men like this. If I'm going to have lunch with him it's going to be to prove that I can get to know a man for something besides flicking. I've got to do it.
Sitting at my desk a few minutes later, mixed emotions raced through me. I was angry at my lack of will power; angry because I had said yes to a strange man, and troubled because after I had I had immediately begun to imagine fucking him. At the same time I was oddly exhilarated. And I was scared. It was an old familiar feeling. I tried to push the memories of the broken marriages and love affairs away, and with them all thoughts of the luncheon date. There was so much pain involved in the past, and so much potential pain in the future if I wasn't careful. But in contemplating the pain, I couldn't help but think of some of the pleasure, those long nights twisted in the sheets with the smell of sex permeating the room, fucking and sucking as if there were no tomorrow. But, unfortunately, there always did turn out to be a tomorrow, and it usually turned out to be filled with arguments, betrayal and, ultimately, grief. This time, I thought, tomorrow won't be that way.
I went straight from the office to the children's hospital where I worked as a volunteer three nights a week. Somehow, working there seemed to be the only thing I had found that could get my mind off of sex for any length of time.
When I got to the hospital I swallowed some coffee hurriedly, then reported in on the second floor. For the next three hours I moved from room to room, telling stories, soothing away tears, and tucking in for the night a dozen young children who had no visitors. The floor I was assigned to held only the abandoned and unwanted children. At first I'd thought it was cruel to separate them from the children whose parents hung anxiously over them, but later I came to realize it was really kindness. They didn't have to witness what they didn't have, and the hospital assigned three times as many volunteers to their rooms as they did to the others.
We were encouraged to give of ourselves to the children. This was unique and very special in my life because it was my only opportunity to give myself to someone in a way other than just offering them my body. Instead of being concerned about my own needs and problems, when I was with the children I was able to take satisfaction in making them feel special instead of hedonistically satisfying myself. It was easy for me to do this in the hospital, but the instant I stepped outside I always seemed to be back on the same old sexual merry-go-round, looking for some anonymous cock to have stuck up inside my cunt so I'd feel like I was worth something.
It was nine o'clock when I walked into my apartment, exhausted and hungry. I heated a can of soup, ate half of it, and crawled into a tub of hot water to soak away my fatigue. The instant I stretched out in the soothing water, I became aware of my naked body, of its smooth curves and flawless skin. Of my tits, weightlessly bobbing in the water. And of the water flooding my cunt with warmth. Without being conscious of it, my hand dropped between my legs and my fingers began to lazily massage my clitoris. As a sensual feeling began to overtake my body I abruptly remembered I had a date the next day. The date reminded me, for some reason, of my husbands, Jeff, Red, and Tom. I tried telling myself it was crazy to compare a luncheon date with my marriages. But it wasn't, and I knew it! Everything inside of me was sounding a bell of alarm, but, simultaneously, the pounding of my heart and the clenching of the muscles in my cunt were crying out for the thrill of a man inside me.
I bathed quickly and got ready for bed. In the darkened room I tossed and turned, sleepless an afraid, but restless and horny. After a while, in my confusion and frustration, I began to cry for all of my childhood hopes and dreams. I was sure that none of them would ever come true because of the things that had happened to me back ten.
Oh, Grandma, if only you had lived! I thought in despair.
For the first ten years of my life Grandma had loved, protected, and guided me. She'd also kept me from feeling set apart or different because I had no father. I'd grown up with the knowledge that Margot, my beautiful mother, hadn't married the man who fathered me. I was illegitimate.
Grandma, Margot and I had lived hr a small white house surrounded by fragrant blooms and rich green shrubs. When I was very young, I think I thought Grandma was my mother, since she was the one who tended my needs, gave me affection, and heard my prayers. I called her Mama until the day she died.
Of course I knew that the beautiful woman I saw briefly each morning and occasionally evenings and weekends was actually my mother. But she never permitted me to call her that. Childlike, I was proud of Margot's beauty, but I never dreamed of being like her, the way most little girls dream of growing up to be just like their mothers. I dreamed of being just like Grandma: warm, tender, absorbed in her home and her granddaughter.
Grandma used to tell me about my grandfather, who had died before I was born. He'd been tall and straight and handsome. How happy he'd made her. Later, I realized there was a purpose behind her warm stories. She wanted me to understand that when a man and a woman loved each other, they married and shared their hopes and disappointments. It was Grandma's way of trying to offset the effect of my very modern mother's way of life on my thinking. Maybe she would have succeeded if she had lived longer. But she didn't.
I came home from school one day and found Grandma's motionless body beside a flower bed, the trowel she'd been using still in her hand. There was a small smile on her lips, and her eyes were open, but she was cold. So cold! I screamed when I touched her, and I went on screaming. Finally, a neighbor picked me up and carried me inside.
Margot arrived about an hour later, crying. I'd never seen her cry before. I flung myself against her, and we clung to each other, more like sisters than like a mother comforting her daughter.
Margot turned twenty-five the day after Grandma died. The man she was dating brought her a cake. I counted the candles on it, not thinking anything of the fact that she was only fifteen years older than I.
Margot sold Grandma's little white house with its beautiful garden about a month later, and we moved into a third-floor apartment in a new, modem building. Her life didn't change much. She went on working every day and going out practically every night. For a while I felt lost and very lonely, without direction. Evenings were the worst. All too often I ate dinner alone, did my schoolwork, watched television, then went to bed, not knowing when Margot would come home. I felt like I was eighty instead of ten, that my life was over. Little did I know!
Loneliness made me start to daydream about Margot getting married and my having brothers and sisters and a father. I started really looking at the men she dated, trying to decide which of them I'd most want for my father. I liked several of them, but when Lou started staying overnight a couple of times a week, I decided he'd do nicely. He liked me and brought me small gifts when he brought Margot something. When I went to bed he'd kiss me good night and tell me not to forget my prayers. Later, hearing Lou's and Margot's soft voices and smothered laughter from the room next to mine, I'd fall asleep quickly, certain that my dreams were about to come true.
One evening I was home alone while Margot was off someplace. I was watching television when there was a knock on the door. Margot had given me explicit instructions never to open the door when I was home alone, but she had never spelled out why, and I was so lonely the prospect of being around another person, even a stranger, was exciting to me.
I answered the door and saw that it was Lou. 'I thought you were out with Margot,' I said over the chain lock that permitted the door to open a few inches.
'Uh, no,' he said. 'Well, uh, I was, but something came up that, uh, she had to take care of, so I came back here to wait for her. Do you mind if I come in?' In all of my ten-year-old innocence I thought nothing of it and undid the chain and let him in, and went back to the couch in front of the television set.
Lou stood in the middle of the room and asked, 'Do you mind if I sit down next to you?'
'Why?' I said, 'You want to watch television with me?'
'No,' he said, 'I thought we might sit and talk. You know, I've never gotten the chance to know you as well as I'd like because I'm always busy with your mother.'
This approach was, of course, irresistible to me. He was interested in me! It seemed to me in my naivete that he wanted to be my father. I blurted out, 'Are you going to marry Margot and be my daddy?'
'Well, maybe,' he said, 'but first we've got to get to know each other. I want us to get to know each other very well.'
'Okay.'
'I'll show you something very special if you'll turn off the TV,' he said soothingly.
