New Year Celebrations

Susan's life went on as usual with work and classes. I had no way of knowing whether she had abandoned figure modelling besides following her around which I was not prepared to do. She seemed to know how to use makeup when I met her, but somewhere in her modelling phase, she had started to apply ashen white makeup base and vermilion lipstick. My mom and I gently suggested that we liked her old look better and took to calling her new apparition-like appearance "spooky kabuki" between ourselves. She looked weird and awful. Susan would sometimes ask me to make her a distress drink when she arrived from the day's exertion or tedium. She liked sweet drinks like white Russians. She seemed to consume a lot of alcohol alone in her condo. On her birthday, the first full year we were together, I gave her a case of Beringer White Zinfandel as one of her gifts along with a thirty-two function Singer sewing machine I felt she could use some of her marvelous gift for crafts with and also to suggest I wanted to create a situation of domesticity with her, which at that point, I did. Well, as far as I know, Susan never used the sewing machine, but she alone or with companion(s) had finished off five of the six bottles of wine in one day by the time I had arrived the next evening, and she had gone through about half of the last bottle. She celebrated Christmas of 1996 back in West "by God" Virginia as she called it-at least I thought she had, one year, either 1996 or 1997, she was on a shopping trip pre Christmas with her mom to Atlanta when I called and her dad answered at the house. She had come down by way of Nashville and slept in the condo but never bothered to tell me anything beyond she was headed home for the holidays and would be back in Nashville in a few days keeping me in the dark that she was actually here on her way through and certainly not inviting me to go with her. But in 1996, Susan actually was here (in Nashville) for the end of year bash. I asked her if she wanted to go out and do anything to celebrate, but she said she did not want to fight the crowds. We would just live it up at the condo. She asked me to bring a bottle of Champagne. Judging from the way she could put it away, I picked up two chilled bottles of Freixenet Cordon Negro which I thought was pretty good for the price at that time. When I arrived with bottles in hand and she buzzed me up, she was in negligee. I thought she wanted some immediate attention and was prepared to dive right in, but she insisted we would ring the new year in right around midnight. I watched some of the pre ball drop celebrations and she summoned me into the boudoir just before the fateful hour. She said, "I'm gonna give you a new year you're never going to forget. I want you to fuck my tight ass." I had never done this and told her, "Homey, don't play that. That ain't in my repertoire baby." But she assured me it was perfectly safe as she had no workplace exposure, was tested all the time, and had had both hepatitis and meningitis vaccines. She said, "I want you to stick it, but I want you to lick it first to get me lubricated." I just about bolted but the normal revulsion was tempered by the sparking wine buzz, the New Year excitement, and the forbidden fruit rush, doing the taboo. I asked her if she was clean, she assured me she had bathed and put on the lingerie just before I got there. I started with foreplay, kissing, licking neck and ears, sucking hardening nipples, worked my way down to her bellybutton, and on into cunnilingus where she tasted quite clean and finally did what she had requested. I approached with reserve, sort of like a guerrilla stalking a sentry, but when I started to gently probe with my tongue, Susan bucked wildly and tried to pull my face deeply into her anus with her hands. I inserted one finger lubricated with saliva, then two, then several, before she said, "I'm ready, put your dick in." I normally have great control but the second my glans began to enter she screamed in pain and I came immediately. I was worried that she would think I was a sadist relishing her anguish, but she simply went to sleep. In the morning, much to my surprise, she wanted me to butt fuck her again, saying I had the angle wrong and had not given her time for her sphincter to relax. All of a sudden, my recovering virgin was a sodomy expert.

The Show Off

I have focused on Susan's exhibitionist streak, a proclivity not limited to our semi-public lovemaking or to her fashion/hand modelling. Susan was still working at the VA in Nashville, doing p.r.n. work at a rehabilitation center and other medical venues, so much so she was having to limit her hours so she did not creep into a higher tax bracket, and taking sundry classes, most notably art at Watkins. She joined the Tennessee Association of Craft Artists and showed some real talent with the ability to produce in my eyes and others, some quality art. I have always appreciated the artist's gifts and even envied them, since my middle school art instructor Jose Rodriguez had put paid to any of my own artistic aspirations in eighth grade. Our project was for each student to produce a drawing of a fern in a pot. When I asked Mr. Rodriguez, who had long hair, a black beard, and was the first man I had ever met who had let his fingernails grow out like a woman, how to produce depth in my drawing, his answer was, "You have to feel it, man." I was somewhat bemused if not outright mystified, but Jose, he insisted we call him "Jose"-not Mr. Rodriguez and who also insisted he was straight, not that I recall anyone asking him, and who had contended he had been a boxer, refused to expound any farther for me or demonstrate technique. I was given a low grade on the project despite my best efforts, unassisted by Jose who thought I was a preppy, rich, spoiled prick and was determined to knock me down a notch. I asked him at the end of the course what I could do to become a better artist, and this didac who had it in for me said, "The best thing you can do for the art world is never pick up a pencil or paintbrush again. You have zero talent, zip, zero, nada." Thus chastened, and taking his words to heart as I was taught to respect my instructors, I never attempted to produce any art for twenty-five plus years. Susan, on the other hand, was producing much art quickly and was damn good at it. My admiration for her talents only expanded. She was a real down home Martha Stewart in my mind, capable of doing so much, so well. She would bring me jelly and baked goods she made and presented beautifully. One night I came over and she had homemade rye bread baking in the condo oven. It turned out to be a lovely artisanal loaf any upscale, small batch bakery would have been proud of and it was delicious, but Susan was not familiar with niche bakeries and was such a perfectionist that she threw away this baked treasure because it did not resemble the prosaic grocery bought rye she was acquainted with-man, I would have devoured the whole loaf if she had given me the chance. Susan finally had a long weekend away from her many logs in the fire in Nashville and instead of flitting back to West Virginia, I invited her to spend the time off with me on a road trip to Atlanta. We stayed in the Buckhead Days Inn and though I paid for everything (as was almost invariably the case through our relationship), Susan did manage to wangle us the rate for Federal travel which was only around $30 a night by mentioning her affiliation with the VA. We explored the city, had a great meal with the really fashionable people at Prime-steak and sushi as it happens, and I joined the High Museum for us as we toured because Susan assured me we would take Atlanta trips together often. As it was, in the more than decade more with her, we passed through Atlanta only twice more coming to or going from other places. We never visited the High, where I appreciated the great art and Susan assured me she could duplicate or exceed it, again. When we returned to Nashville, Susan continued her robust schedule. She, one day out of the blue, asked me if I would like to pose for an art class at Watkins. She said it was a bit physically taxing, but it was good money and would be a fun experience for me. I asked her if she had posed, and she said she had sat as the model for a few classes. I called a number Susan had given me as she instructed. The school's representative told me to wear something interesting. I appeared at the school in a Brooks Brothers jacket, straw hat, which twice blew off on Church Street and I had to chase toward Nashville's Cumberland River before I had the sense to take it off and carry it, and carrying a Victorian walking stick. It was a community arts class of mostly senior citizens, but all but a really elderly black lady whose work seemed primitive by contrast, seemed to be masters of the portrait. I stayed in one long pose three hours with one several minute break each hour. I was shocked when one artist who was a white man around seventy took a swig from his large bottle of paint thinner. Others were dismayed enough as well to ask him (as I held my pose) if he realized he had just consumed poison. He assured them he had not, he had rinsed the bottle many times and was now using it to carry water. I was excited to tell the tale to Susan and happy with $36 I had earned, for what I thought was relatively easy though I ached or was stiff in different body parts. I had another call from Watkins a couple of days later and asked the caller what they wanted me to wear or bring. I was told it didn't matter. I appeared in street clothes and was told at a reception desk to see Madeline Reed who was evidently the one who would be directing me in the auditorium where a student art exhibition was on display. I peered at the work of the students, some of which seemed pretty darned good to me, and walked around with a few other spectators until I saw a well-dressed woman I surmised to be in her late forties with a name badge on. Before I could discern the name, I knew this was Ms.Reed because she was the only person there who seemed to have any official capacity with the school, and in the event, I was acquitted of her connection. I introduced myself and thinking she was conducting the class, asked her what she would have me doing. She said she was not the instructor for this one and walked me to the end of a hall where there were two classrooms and a bathroom. The teacher in this class was a brunette woman in her late twenties whose name I never heard, only that her father had been a prominent local Nashville artist/ gallery owner with a German-sounding name. I remember she was reading The Gnostic Prophecies as I entered the classroom. She asked me my modelling experience and I mentioned I had been a Russell Athletic youth model and had done one community art class there at Watkins. She said this class would be different as it was fine arts but most of the students would be undergraduate film schoolers taking it as an elective. She warned me they were "pretty sarcastic" and asked me if I had ever been to a toga party. I replied in the negative and added, "Have you?" To which she handed me a long white sheet, asked me to strip-she said I could keep my shorts-and directed me back to the bathroom I had just passed with Ms. Reed to change. I followed her instructions and emerged in the toga but could not tie it at the shoulder. I explained my predicament as a young blond male film student who was going into the class, helped me tie it, but as I had been warned, he was a bit of a smart ass about it. He said his day job was as a cameraman at one of the local TV stations. I entered the class and was told to do gesture which although I had never done it was able to figure out without explanation. I then was asked to do a short pose as Atlas with the instructor telling me who Atlas was and how to position myself as she had no way of knowing I was fairly literate and had mastered Greek mythos before kindergarten. I was then placed first in chairs, then on a chaise lounge for about two and a half hours but was given breaks. I must have done relatively well, for a couple nights later, a man called from Watkins asking me to pose nude for a class. I declined. I told my parents about the offer and they concurred that I did not need to be doing that. I had no idea at that time that Susan, who had always said she would never pose nude, was doing it all along evidently even before or contemporaneous with my meeting her in 1995. When I related the bizarre question from Watkins, Susan asked, "So when are you going to do it?" "Never, I'm not going to do it. You've been going there a while and said you posed. Did they ever ask you to pose nude?" I asked. "Well, they asked and I posed a few times." "Do you mean clothed like the first class, you arranged for me?" I probed. "Mostly, though sometimes they might have me in a body stocking," Susan said. I retorted, "Like a outfit for a dance class?" "Well, no you couldn't wear these to a dance class, you can see through them, but I only show my top-kinda like a European beach." This was shattering to me, coming from my self-proclaimed "virgin". My great grandfather had been the first Lubavitch Rabbi of Baltimore, a contemporary and colleague of the Rebbe Schneerson. I grew up in an Orthodox day school, this behavior from a committed partner was simply unacceptable. Susan and I argued with her talking about how valuable the nude model was to the artist-a big part of the art, the muse. I said she was a medical professional making good money who did not need to be doing that. "Let someone else be the muse, you're a great artist in your own right and we sure don't need the money," was my riposte. She said she wasn't aware of my objections and did not mean to conceal anything. If I was this upset, she promised she would never pose nude or for that matter, any other way again. The twelve dollars an hour simply meant nothing to her when compared with doing anything to hurt the love of her life, me. As I would later find out, her posing was much more extensive and provocative than she described, and she would evidently return to it at least once.

Naked Aggression

Susan and I would take in occasional services at the Temple, which is blocks from my home and adjacent to Nashville's most famous plantation, the Belle Meade Mansion, and is Nashville's wealthiest Jewish congregation and which was undergoing extensive and expensive renovation at that time. I felt uncomfortable attending but not belonging to the congregation there. I also was no fan of the uber liberal politics there. Susan would always be off to some alleged class or another or on an errand. We spent little time together and she drove to West Virginia to be with her family on any extended break from work where she had scheduled four days on, three days off to facilitate the trips home. We would split the times we were together, which were to me gallingly infrequent, between my parents' home where I was still helping with physical care, mostly of my dad, and upkeep and her condo. We would have sex almost invariably when we were together with me complying with her demand to pull out and her lack of concern if I had any pleasure. I ended up with prostatitis to go along with a varicocele that I had been battling since my late teens which was torqued into excruciating pain by not being allowed to ejaculate. Susan enrolled in yet another series of classes, this one at the Watkins Institute of Art downtown which has subsequently moved and become a college. Susan had showed me raku pots that she said she had thrown in pottery class at Marshall and also said she had studied printmaking there, so I presumed she had an interest in art and a modicum of ability. Susan also began to express an interest in modelling which like beginning dance classes at her age, I found rather odd for a professional woman approaching thirty. On nights I would stay at the condo, Susan would read after our coital adventure, generally Dolly Parton's biography which she kept at the bedside but occasionally a tome called Skinny Legs and All, a book from one or another of her classes, or very rarely from her Bible. If I fell asleep under the glaring light and awoke, I would often find her sleeping with the light on either not having progressed at all in the text or evidently reading the same page or passages over and over again. I was permitted to stay at the condo and sometimes left the keys. I would not answer her phone but let the messages go through to the machine when I would stay there. Some seemed normal and family or work related but about half a dozen of them came from people, generally male and sometimes the same man asking her to pose. I would ask her when she would return home and play her messages off, what that was about but she assured me that her modelling was above board for fashion or products-for instance being "a hand model for products", she said, asking me if I had any idea the kind of big money a good hand model could make. I was really disturbed by one call from a gruff-sounding redneck of about fifty I would guess from the voice, saying he was coming in from Huntington and would take her out for "cocktails". This one I could not let pass and confronted her on. "Who in the hell is that?" I asked as she played his message off the answering machine. She replied, as seemed to be her pat answer about any male she was acquainted with in her "virgin" past, "that he was a 'gay' older man she knew back home. He didn't sound the least bit gay to me and if he were, why did he want to go out with her? She said she would not go out with him to reassure me but with her always bound for some class or errand, I have no idea whether she saw him. We were in a neighboring community one day called Franklin, dining and antiquing when she left the antique mall and was going to pick something up at a Big Lots in the same strip of shops. After a while, I became bored with the old stuff and followed her into Big Lots to find her talking to a mid-twenties construction worker/ farmer type in the coveralls and work boots, seemingly with great familiarity. I stole up from behind and inquired, " Who is your friend?" The young man was between our heights, about 5-8, probably 160 but all muscle and probably could have broken me in two or cut me to pieces, but Susan who seemed really miffed by my stealthy approach and the question said "nobody", and we left without further incident. Susan had given me professionally made photos of herself on my birthday our first year together. They were framed nicely and she was nicely dressed. One afternoon at the condo, Susan said she had a surprise to show me and came out with a bound portfolio behind her back. She showed me photos which she said were taken at the same session as the birthday gifts where she wore different outfits down to lingerie photos. She said they were all part of the same glamour package she had given herself as a gift in her early twenties to record her youthful beauty. She looked good in most of them but fat in the face in others. She held pages down to conceal certain photos from me-"What are those? The nudies?" I joked. Susan was still pursuing an aspiration to model and I started to notice she would walk around the condo, frequently nude or topless with the curtains opened. I would rush to close the drapes as traffic rushed by on West End Avenue or a field full of Nashville's most affluent boys would play football or lacrosse across the way at their prep school with me fearing everyone could get a gander at her immodesty. Susan also started to completely shave her pudenda at this point, coming out to surprise me one night, asking me, "Who is Daddy's little girl again?" I let her know that wasn't my deal-I liked some hair there, from natural to nicely trimmed to a landing strip or Mohawk, but none of that Daddy's little girl shit for me. Susan seemed to agree and let the black curls start to grow back out. But she would alarmingly be at her window or patio door naked and would want to make love in public places, on the large campus near her home, on the little side streets off West End in her tiny Toyota, once in my car in my late grandmother's driveway with my dad pulling in in his Lincoln as Susan deftly leaped with her naked ass over the backseat into the hatch of my Blazer to retrieve her clothes and dress, with me simply zipping up my fly. I asked my dad if he saw anything later, and perhaps just being cool, he said he did not. I am not particularly modest or an exhibitionist either, for that matter, just a guy who like most others will take a piece of pussy any chance and any way he can get it under most circumstances. I used to hate the "give me a piece" expression but Susan would use it frequently-"Come get you a piece", "break you off a piece", "lick my clitty and take you a piece of this pussy" were her crude ways of offering up some loving. I always obliged though-I guess I had a strong libido. One night I arrived at the condo and was greeted with her in a teddy and burning candles, but unlike other episodes, Susan had the lights on as well. She had something to show me. She produced a charcoal female nude and asked me if I "know who this is?" "Sophia Loren," I retorted, guessing from the perfect proportions which looked nothing like Susan ever had, particularly at this point where she had starved, vomited, and exercised herself down to an A-cup breast and incidentally into amenorrhea. Susan said curtly, "No-that's me." The picture may have been herself idealized but looked nothing at all like her. She began to blow out candles or extinguish them with a dome or her hand and said "leave". I immediately regretted the Sophia remark as Susan was angry and asked her who did the drawing. She said, "I did." And I tried to deflect the conflict by saying how nice the charcoal was as "a work of art." That did not seem to placate her and she yelled, "Now, take your little dick and get." As a point of information and clarification, my penis is slightly longer than average and of average girth as Susan had earlier measured it. I was angry at her assault on my manhood and told Susan if there were a hundred girls our age in a room, by looks alone, she would be about the sixtieth I'd try to pick up. She was deeply hurt by this and jibed back, "Well if you just had about two inches more dick , you could satisfy a woman"-keep in mind that I never permitted myself to cum until she had orgasmed and was not faking at this point and until the last months of our relationship. I would always willingly eat her pussy until my jaw ached and my face and hair were soaked in her juices. She called her mother who I heard tell her to "Come on back home-baby," without Susan having shared the details of the argument. For the first and only time to Susan, I mimicked her mother's drawl and told her "Now, you get along home, ya hear," as I kicked the cinder block wall by the elevators as she followed me out in a bathrobe to continue the argument. Note: I have occasionally battered walls or doors in my lifetime after seeing one of the Bridges brothers in a movie where he was taught you can fix things if you break them but not people. Susan went home to mother.

Complications and Lies

There had been little doubt on my part of Susan's fidelity or veracity in spite of some rather far fetched claims about being related to the Louisville Courier-Journal Binghams-an air even more rarefied than my humble family. Susan had evident doubts about my faithfulness, however. On the night of the 1996 Georgia-Tennessee football game, I asked if I could come over and watch on her ESPN cable. I did not have a key to her condo at that point and she said she would be working. I told her that I would go to a strip mall near her condo and watch the game on one of the screens at a bar or restaurant there. As it turned out, a sports bar a block from my house which I thought would have been packed was virtually empty, so instead of driving five more miles, I opted to watch the game there. As another synchronicity, a Marshall man came in and watched the game next to me. I was excited to tell Susan who was a Marshall alum of the small world coincidence. When I returned home and called her, she was irate. "Who have you been out fucking around on me with?" she demanded. "Pardon" was my shocked response. "Where in the hell have you been? I got off early and went to Lion's Head to meet you and you were no where in sight. I looked everywhere and then started rolling up and down the fucking highway looking for your lying ass." I could not comprehend the venom. I had a delightful story to tell her and she was absolutely spiteful. I was in the dark about her psychotic level of jealousy; this was my eye opener. She eventually accepted that my evening had been completely innocent but instead of backing off, made it clear that I should never make a mistake about my whereabouts with her again. I, on the other hand, gave her great latitude in "running errands" which she was constantly doing when not at work or in class-she was pursuing continuing education credits and started study to complete a nurse practitioner degree. I was overjoyed that she was continuing the conversion classes on her route to join my faith. One morning, Susan said she had a conversion class at Temple that evening, a few blocks from my home. I tried through the day to contact her on her work-provided pager about going out to dinner after the class which she had said would end that night at seven.When I failed to reach Susan, my parents and I decided to meet her at the temple and take her to dinner after her class. On arrival there, only one car was in the parking lot and the building's doors were locked. As I walked back to the car, a secretary emerged and relocked the entrance from the outside. I asked her about what had happened to tonight's conversion class. She explained that the introduction to Judaism classes Susan had said she had been taking had run for three weeks alternating between the various temples and synagogues but had ended six months ago with another cycle of classes about to start in a couple of weeks. I thanked her, but realized Susan who said she was off to the introduction to Judaism conversion class two nights a week had been lying to me for six months. I did not confront Susan about the deception, but ever thereafter, I was skeptical about Susan's so-called classes and occasionally would drive to see if her car was where she said she was going to be. Only once was the Celica where she told me she would be when she had enrolled in a dance class in One Hundred Oaks and the sports car was indeed parked there. 

Time for a Change

Susan had been raised in a conservative, if not repressive Baptist church where her father was the deacon, but from our earliest conversations when she was still sharing K's house, Susan had said she always felt an attraction to the Jewish faith-she had even researched and written on the Holocaust back in school. She had expressed her interest in my religion, Judaism, early on according to her, to her parents. She told me she  had told them that when she grew up she would be Jewish or it seemed tangentially at this point, Catholic. Upon our return from the reunion that never was trip, after paying my $250 speeding ticket, gained returning $89 shoes, Susan said she had a surprise for me. She was going to enroll in conversion classes and become Jewish. We were watching a PBS show about a small West Virginia community's Jewish population when a woman born Christian who had married a Jew there and converted said, "I took the name and I if I was woman enough to do that, I'd take the faith that went with it." Susan exclaimed, "That's it! That's exactly how I feel." Susan declared on the spot she was going to find and take conversion class with the intention of becoming Jewish. Here was the one opportunity I had to direct the relationship the way it should have been in my ideal world. I must explain my connection or lack thereof at the time to Nashville's organized Jewish community. I attended the Orthodox Jewish day school through second grade, always went to the Conservative congregation for services and Hebrew school through my bar mitzvah, but due to a financial reversal suffered by my father because of the collapse of Charter, an oil refining and publishing company, was no longer affiliated with any of the congregations after the 1979 bar mitzvah until the year 2000. No, I had not experienced any millennial epiphany-my father had affiliated Susan and I with a reformed congregation so I would have someplace to marry. So, when Susan embarked on her conversion process, she did so with my blessing and full support in spirit, but since I was not a member myself, without my active involvement to help integrate her into a congregation. This was the glaring failure on my part that may have been the turning point in our future as a couple. If I had eagerly spent a few thousand dollars to rejoin a shul and held her hand through the process, we might be married now with our Jewish children to raise together, but alas, this was not to be. I had a few other logs on the fire at that time-from seeking a business-either a restaurant or liquor store to purchase, to helping my Dad who literally seemed to be shrinking (he was, his spine collapsed, he had to endure five procedures, and he shrunk six inches), to helping maintain some properties we had. I felt if Susan's conversion was heartfelt, she would handle it herself splendidly.

An Odd Reunion

Our relationship had progressed to the point of sexual intercourse but was still an unusual union. We mutually decided we did not like condoms and in our monogamy (I presume here, as I am certain on my part but less so of her), we abandoned their use. Susan was on the pill to regulate her periods yet insisted I pull out and this was the pattern for ten years until she decided chances were running out for her to get pregnant. Many evenings I would engage in foreplay and intercourse until she orgasmed and would give her a few more strokes where she would excuse herself and when she returned from the bathroom, would be wearing flannel pajamas and occasionally face cream and/or rollers. I was left many a night with a throbbing hard on. She was done and had no particular concern whether I had been satisfied or not. Susan would be upset if after she left me hanging, I would turn on Channel 55 (the Playboy Channel) to try to finish off. She had a habit of injuring me by clawing my back, biting my neck, and early, before I screamed that "you're really injuring me", my penis, when she was about to depart for a visit home or some work or education-related trip. I suppose she was trying to assure my fidelity which was unquestioned until I realized from her behavior, which I will elaborate on later, the relationship could have no possible future in December of 2008. But this was 1996, the year of Susan's tenth high school reunion. Our love life was not all pain and provocation by any means. Susan lived next to-one condo away-from a large Catholic campus that hosts elementary through college institutions where she, who though I wasn't aware of it at the time, could display her exhibitionist tendencies. We even fucked through the net on the tennis courts there. Well, Susan wanted me to take her to aforementioned reunion. I agreed, if reluctantly, because Susan had badmouthed her home state so much. Her tag line joke was: "You know what West Virginia exports?... Its people." From what she claimed about being a basically dateless ugly duckling in school, a mostly friendless spinster, I could not imagine why she wanted to go. From Susan's statements about not wanting to live there, I thought all her home state produced was misery. But in the event, I acquiesced and told her I would drive her if she wanted to attend. We headed north by way of Virginia and ended up sleeping in Harrisonburg. At the hotel, there was a display case of collectible coins at the reception desk and no night clerk, but instead of scratching that little touch of larceny and walking off richer for the experience, I rang the bell about ten times over the three minutes it took the Asian Indian working there to wake, and he checked us in. After a restive night for me (I tend to stand sentry when I am with a female partner in a hotel), we woke and Susan blew off the reunion. She announced she wanted to go to Philadelphia and see the Cezanne exhibit. So, off we went. I drove through to Gettysburg where we ate dinner at a historic tavern where I remarked our waitress looked like Hope from my mother's Days of Our Lives soap opera. The young server was flattered; Susan seemed offended that I mentioned the resemblance. We found a small motel owned and operated by an Indian family where there were copious vacancies and a thirty dollar a night bill. The rooms were clean if somewhat Spartan, but what the room lacked in luxury, our neighbors for the evening certainly made up for. A homosexual couple had chosen the sparse accommodations as well and checking in at the same time, they lavished us with custom glitter decorated clothing that they made to sell but gladly gave us. We explored the battlefield the next day before proceeding through Amish country and ending up at King of Prussia Mall. We shopped a little, ate at Red Lobster, that Susan really thought was fine dining, and when I returned to the Blazer, found two policemen hovering around the open rear hatch. At the time I thought nothing had been taken, but upon returning to Nashville, I found the spare tire had been stolen. We checked into the King of Prussia Best Western and after about ten minutes in which we had normal volume conversation with me composing and reciting an on the spot poem about the trip, the hotel security guard banged on the door, telling us to keep the noise down. He then demanded I accompany him to the front desk when I attempted to explain there was no noise to "keep down". I was glad to go with him as I was livid and wanted to talk to management. I told the night manager my uncle was in the hospitality business in Nashville and that customers deserved at the least, courtesy as the guard who was a black man of about fifty and about six feet, six inches and two hundred and ninety pounds, bristled with anger. The next day I bought some glove leather Italian loafers that had been four hundred dollars on clearance for $89 and the salesman threw in a premium leather belt and a package of dress socks. We stayed that night in Philadelphia at a hotel near the museum, accompanied in by an armed off-duty policeman who explained it was a dangerous neighborhood but that guests could request protective escort at the concierge desk. We heard gunfire and sirens all night. At this point, Susan, who had already scrubbed the reunion, announced we would head back to Nashville in the morning without seeing Cezanne as she had committed to host a college friend Sally, who was on her way from Nashville to New Orleans, at her condo. This caused our first argument, our first really serious dispute of the relationship, as I put my foot down and told Susan that there was no way I was going to rush back to Nashville for that, but that I would gladly pay for a hotel room for Sally if that was what Susan desired. Susan was furious but finally accepted my logic. We went to see Cezanne, did the Rocky steps, bought the admission tickets from a dubious Jewish scalper, were intimidated by the Nation of Islam exhibit guards, and then found a room at the Holiday Inn Convention Center across from the New Jersey State Fair in Cherry Hill. We stayed for a full week exploring Philly. On Sunday, we dined at world famous Bookbinder's and the valet parkers there laughed their asses off, watching me put money into a Philadelphia Inquirer machine twice, after I could not open it the first time but figuring Susan and I would each enjoy a copy of the Sunday edition to commemorate the trip. The parkers must have seen many tourists duped by the malfunctioning machine. Allen Funt never came out and the Inquirer never reimbursed me the money though I called and wrote them of what had transpired. When we checked out, I bought a console TV at a liquidation sale the hotel was having for fifty dollars. Unbeknownst to me, a helpful maid lifted one of my bags as I rolled our luggage out on a courtesy dolly as she opened the door for me, help I had not sought. It contained my prescription for a medicine that helped me breathe through my occasional bouts of asthma. One aside about the journey was that my father had insisted I take a couple of thousand dollars in traveller's cheques which almost no businesses either accepted or even recognized. They were turned away at the New Jersey fair where the clerks confused them with personal checks. Another incident happened with carnies who dumped our clothes out of the hotel laundry and helped themselves to our detergent. A tattooed girl argued with me and left after replacing our clothes with literally unspeakably filthy rags. I knew she was headed to bring her man back and back they came with him irate, vulgar, and threatening. I was not unduly worried as Susan had wrapped a thirty-eight special we had travelled with, concealed in a soda carton with cans to both St. Louis and on this trip, in a towel from the room and I would really have killed him if he had approached any closer. Now, we were headed South, but I was concerned my father would object to the shoe purchase as he had always said soft leather may feel good but just doesn't last. So, I rushed to return the shoes to King of Prussia battling a flu-like illness and on the way there, was pulled over by a black state patrolman with dyslexia. He said we were doing ninety-five on the turnpike when I had been going seventy-five. I had sped and earned the ticket as the limit there was fifty-five, but I could not bitch about it with a console TV that the cop could well have thought was stolen, an open container of Old Overholt Rye Whiskey which we had last sipped days before in our hotel room, and a concealed loaded gun in the car. The officer also misread the registration and said it did not belong on that car-he was totally wrong, but I could not afford to do anything but smile and thank him. Not that the whole trip to that point was a bust, some people had been very nice, but I had never seen people openly smoking crack until we made it to Philadelphia. On a sad note, the nicest waitress ever, a blond of about forty, who told us she had never been farther than Delaware, had bent over backwards when I was having some real respiratory distress. She brought many extras in a downtown Italian eatery without being asked and said they were on the house. I was so sick I asked Susan to take care of the tip and went to the restroom near the exit. After driving off, I asked Susan who was paying with one of my two wallets which I had asked her to carry in her purse, what tip she gave. Her answer: two dollars. I would have left a five at a minimum. We drove South by way of Maryland including a two-lane stretch where I thought I was lost but asking near midnight at a fire station, found we were on the right course, that the highway had never been completed there. We saw Antietam, explored the fields of carnage and drove to spend the next night at the Ramada in Morgantown. I stopped at the WalMart there to buy over the counter respiratory relief. I was literally too sick and tired to test the fog hazard winding mountain highways and let Susan navigate her home state. We arrived in Huntington, shopped and at a Hill's department store where I bought my mom pug refrigerator magnets and a stain treatment I still use thirteen years later and napped in the parking lot. We went to meet Susan's sister and gave her the TV and Susan paid for my prescription bag that I had called the Cherry Hill hotel about and had shipped down by UPS. The medicine was there but someone had liberated the toiletries. We drove around the town, but I was not at that point taken to her actual home in a rural enclave called Point Pleasant. We met her Mom at the sister's house, stayed the night at a Ramada that was under renovation with a light switched off that continued to buzz and blink all night, depriving all sleep for me and heavy equipment construction starting at dawn. There were numerous bugs in the room from the site work. I tried to have the bill adjusted as we departed but was told only the general manager could do that and that he was not there. Susan was scheduled for work in Nashville the next day, so I knew we couldn't linger but felt the general manager routine was bullshit. I told the staff as much to hear Susan say, "Don't worry about it (this after I or my parents had spent three thousand dollars on her trip)-I have to live here." To which I naturally replied, "...at the Ramada Inn?" We put Huntington behind us and Susan cried for more than an hour, all the way to Morehead, Kentucky where she immediately turned off the waterworks about how it destroyed her each time she left her home state and went calmly into a convenience store for a potty break. She did not cry again on our journey back to Nashville.

What's Eating You

As I spent several nights at Susan's condo I would notice she had hardly touched dinner, out or in, but would wake up to find her eating entire large jars of jelly. She would devour things when she thought I was sleeping or perhaps she was sleep eating herself. By way of our physical descriptions, at the time I met Susan, I was five feet, nine inches tall, and a defined one hundred and sixty-five pounds. She was around five feet, seven and I would estimate one hundred and fifty pounds with large B or small C-cup breasts. I could not help but notice Susan was losing weight, discernibly in the midriff but alarmingly her breasts were really shrinking. Susan had started to bring books and magazines to dinner out and would hardly eat anything. She would excuse herself toward the last stage of dinner, no matter where or what we ate and would come back often, almost invariably, smelling of vomit and sometimes with it clearly on her clothes. My parents and I became extremely concerned for Susan's well being. My mother either happened in the ladies room at the same time or out of worry for her, followed and was convinced she heard Susan throwing up the dinner we had just bought her. My father was upset about spending twenty plus dollars a meal, but my Mom and I were terrified Susan was destroying her health. We called her mother in West Virginia seeking her assistance and to share our distress. Her mother seemed more perturbed at our call than upset about her daughter and told us, "What do you want me to do about it? She's eighteen and can do what she wants. Ain't she?" Thus rebuffed we did what we could in trying to help Susan overcome the eating disorder which damaged Susan's health and contributed to tooth loss and lousy oral health.

More Momentary Madness

Susan had left the insurer because they would not permit her time off to travel to her ailing grandmother's bedside in another state. Tragically, the grandmother did die and Susan quit. She also tried to associate herself with sexual harassment that was extant in that company at that time and was receiving wide local media coverage. Susan managed to secure a position in the VA system as a psych nurse. One day, she had car trouble but wanted to join my family for the evening so we picked her up at work. We stopped at the Belle Meade Kroger to pick up some supplies and as we were turning off the radio a public service announcement about women's health was read by a physician both my parents had known for many years. Susan, not knowing our acquaintance with said doctor began to slander him. "I wouldn't want to have anything to do with that doctor that y'all heard on the radio." My mother inquired, "Why is that Susan?" To which Susan replied, "He's a front shop doc, connected to the mafia." The rest of the party in the car exchanged knowing glances, but once again didn't push the matter.

My Dinner with Passive-Aggressive

Dancing in the post-coital glow, sauntering in the sunshine of Susan's Saturday off, I was happy when my parent's offered to pick us up and take us to dinner at a Nashville institution called Houston's, sadly like so much else in this narrative-no longer there. I was excited because I had finally, if only metaphorically broken the barrier and I always enjoyed Houston's. Well, Susan seemed dissatisfied with the menu selections, the ambiance, all around disgruntled but not mournful as someone would be who had just lost something precious. As dinner progressed, Susan stopped eating and seemed angry. I tried to ascertain what was wrong, worrying that her kidney stone(s) might be returning and she balled, "You've taken my virginity and you can just go on so blithely." This was uttered with my parents sitting aghast across the booth. I had not believed her claim of innocence in the first place, but her behavior in so public a place was beyond the pale. How could a professional woman comport herself this way? I said, "As to whether I stole something-I am certain it was a gift given, willingly bestowed-as to your virginity-I will be forever grateful, but I have always thought that to be a matter between a person and their conscience and the Lord." Susan stormed out but did not walk towards her condo but to my parent's car in the parking lot. We barely had time to pack our uneaten meals; she had departed in such a huff.

Pluck the Virgin

I was skeptical, to say the least, of Susan's claims of "hymenhood"-my smart ass term for virginity. She had studied in London, she said on a Fulbright. She had been in travelling marching bands, gone to Marshall and Vanderbilt, yet had claimed when she met me that she had alternately either never even been kissed or only kissed briefly in a utility closet by an older, married male co-worker when she was doing floor nursing in West Virginia. I had actually been with a couple of virgins and she certainly did not feel like one. On the return to good health after the kidney stone passed, Susan decided to reward me for my patience. She greeted me at the door in negligee with a cascade of kisses when I arrived at her condo, and for the first time, she had candles burning everywhere. Had this become a shrine to what she was supposedly about to sacrifice? She whisked me into the bedroom, saying I was "gonna get the whole cup of coffee, tonight." As I was undressing, I understood the implications of what we were about to do and realized that I didn't have a condom. I asked, "You wouldn't happen to have a rubber, would you?" Anticipating a response in the negative from my "untouched" partner, I was already putting my clothes back on for the one block trip to Walgreen's to buy some prophylactics. Susan was saying, "Stay there-I might be able to find something, but by that time, I was standing behind her, slipping back into my loafers. She turned around with something in her hand and anger in her eye and said, "I told you to stay in the bedroom." She tried to close her entrance hall closet door, but I couldn't help but see she had taken a rubber out of a box that held a gross (144) of them. I blurted out, "Man that's a lot of condoms. Is that standard virgin equipment?" She said with some resentment that they had been part of her public health class at Marshall and she did not want them to go to waste. I replied, "So, you knew one day your prince would cum or was it more a girl can hope can't she." This was the start of December 1995 and I noted the condoms expiration was January 1999-unlikely from a public health class in the late eighties-and half empty, evidently someone had got some use out of them. Well, I put one on that night and the coffee was hot.

Singing St. Louis Blues

Our romance did not advance at some torrid pace. In fact, in spite of the early license, I did not receive a repeat performance and certainly we did not have intercourse. Instead, Susan would invite me to her condo for "coffee". I would come over as she had installed cable which I did not have at my home and because of her work schedule, she did not really watch or need. She said she had purchased cable because of poor over the air reception in the condo which I showed her could easily be rectified if she had only realized that her TV was set to the wrong input (already set for cable and not air) when I had delivered it. Well, I was there for ESPN, the History Channel, A and E, and companionship. We kissed, engaged in petting like teenagers but did not have sex. I found a ridge above her anus between her buttocks and would use that with some lubricating jelly to effectuate my release. As a strange aside, at dusk after dinner at my home with my parents as I walked her to her Celica, she said "I want to see you jerk-off." I said, "Pardon-you want me to what?" She repeated, adding, "I've never seen a man do that". This coming from a woman who worked as a nurse before she entered the insurance industry. She watched in real rapt fascination as I worked quickly-fearing my parents could come out at any time. It was not, I think, a typical relationship. We planned our first trip together for St. Louis. We stopped on route at the gambling riverboat in Metropolis, Illinois. I had another hint of something wrong-I lent Susan $200 to gamble with expecting to share her winnings equally if there were any and to get any remaining principle back if she did not lose it all. I had some remarkable luck at the tables, my first hand was poker and I lost. I decided to shift tables to a "luckier" one. I thought my next try was another poker table and demanded the croupier give me three cards. He asked, "Are you sure-are you sure you want three cards?" As the other players looked on aghast, the dealer doled out two deuces and an ace and I had twenty-one on a $2 bet at two hundred to one. I was so dumb I did not even realize I had been playing blackjack. I did not want to test my luck and did not gamble anymore that evening. I heard my name called on the boat's PA system and worried something had happened to Susan who had started complaining of back pains on the ride or that I had been accused of cheating. When I arrived where I had been summoned I realized it was nothing dire, I had just missed signing the back of one of the traveler's cheques when I bought our chips. Susan had heard the summons and we reunited. I asked how she did at the tables and she claimed she had won, but she never offered me the $200 I had lent her back or offered to split any winnings as I thought had been agreed. Because I had won and still wanted to have a good time, I did not press the issue. When we arrived at the University City Marriott, it was late-11ish. After checking in and stowing some luggage, we went to the hotel restaurant which appeared to be bustling. By way of synchronicity, the establishment was technically closed but had been leased for a wedding where the groom was an insurance agency owner from Susan's hometown of Huntington, West Virginia. The kitchen was closed but the bar was opened. Susan had a mixed drink and I had a Budweiser. Susan was over-friendly with the groom and a couple of male wedding guests, basically rubbing herself all over them. They did not object, but I certainly did, and I literally carried her back to our room. I had never seen her that way-she had always projected a certain reserve in my presence. She must have realized her lapse in decorum and claimed her drink must have been drugged. She was hungry, and I went to the front desk to see what might be open nearby. As luck would have it, a pizza delivery man approached me on the way back to the room. He asked, "Are you Mr. Harper?" I replied, "What do I owe you?" and bought someone else's pizza. I brought it back to the room and we ate with Susan passing out after a few bites. I ate and listened to a prostitute servicing her customer in the adjacent room. In the morning Susan and I took a sauna and kissed a little. If another patron of the hotel had not joined us, I would have tried to fuck her for the first time which certainly would have been my first in a sauna and Susan's, who had suddenly proclaimed virginity, first time anywhere. I was determined to rid her of that on the trip, but as we walked around the zoo, Budweiser, and Grant's Farm, Susan seemed to be in excruciating pain. Susan fought the pain as we went up in the Arch where I was seated in the car as we ascended with a Polish Catholic engineer who now made St. Louis his home and who visited the marvel, he said with great frequency. He described the great freedom we enjoyed here, his admiration for the then sitting Polish Pope, and for the great contribution of the Solidarity union and Lech Walesa. I was impressed by him until he started to tell me what was wrong with this country: The Jews. We proceeded after the Gateway Arch to the riverboat casinos to see if I (we) still had the Metropolis magic. Evidently, our luck had changed because the armed security guard who was checking identifications refused us entry, saying my license was counterfeit and mangling it as he examined it. We decided to dine at Ruth Chris that night with Susan changing into something "Bohemian" in the car. As we entered, a St. Louis Ram football player, who had just participated in the game against San Francisco in the last held at St. Louis's old stadium, exited the establishment with his family. There were literally no other patrons there, just Ruth Chris staff remained at the late hour, but the maitre d' asked if we had reservations. I asked, "No, do we need them?" He haughtily said, "Yes, but I will see what I can do," as if he was doing us a favor to let us eat at the overpriced restaurant. I indignantly told Susan we would find someplace else to eat. The valet parker who had taken my key two minutes earlier refused to relinquish it because my ticket had not been validated. It was the valet key, so I simply took one of the two sets with the remote entry (Susan had the other in her purse) and we drove to a different restaurant where I had steak soup for the first and only time in my life. We went back to the room with Susan's pain flaring back up; and in the morning, I drove back to Nashville. We stopped in Glasgow, Kentucky on the way back where Susan was excited when she saw a car dealership bearing my last name. I told her my Dad had bought a saffron, 1977 Cadillac there. When the sales staff, hungry for a customer approached, Susan introduced herself as Mrs. Goodman. After browsing cars, I asked why she had taken the use of my name and she declared, she felt like Mrs. Goodman already and one day soon surely would be. We went to an antique mall where I showed Susan some place mats with John Barrymore art decorating them, a remarkable coincidence as an original Barrymore that was replicated in one of the four mats had been on the wall of my parent's den throughout my life. Susan insisted I buy them to commemorate our first trip together. When I went to make the purchase, the mall owner tried to cheat me by saying they were four dollars each rather than four for the group. I would have set them down and left, but Susan saw my hesitation and forced my hand, by saying, "Mr. Goodman you're not going to go cheap on me now." So with a dollars worth of dining room place mats in hand that I had just paid almost twenty dollars for, counting tax, we headed south. Susan complained of more back pain which softened my dismay at being taken and focused my concern on her health. Upon arrival home, Susan reclined on my parent's living room floor and I asked my folk's who saw her suffering if she could use my bed. They agreed, and she seemingly reluctant, did as well. On the next day, Susan's doctor found she had kidney stones. She would habitually go to my bed ever thereafter without asking or being invited, and yet, we still had not had sexual intercourse.

Rain Ruins Picnics

Susan and I were invited to a concert and picnic by K at the local art museum where she was a member called Cheekwood. I bought a Coleman cooler for the occasion. The forecast called for a ten percent chance of scattered showers. Perhaps it did not augur well for future happiness but almost immediately after we had opened K and her new companion Frank's wicker basket and my Coleman and laid out a bill of fare that would have made Martha Stewart proud and as the band began to play, a hellish burst of rain put the kibosh on the proceedings. We along with everyone else were scampering for cars or cover. When we arrived back at K's wet and a little worse for the wear, we toweled off and sitting in the kitchen, I misspoke for the first time in Frank and K's presence. I asked Frank where he was from and he said Nebraska. Through chattering teeth, I asked anywhere near the "Pratt" actually meaning Platte. I know and knew the difference and tried to brush it off with a comment on Pratt and Whitney engines. I actually never saw Frank or K after that evening.

Shots Over the Bow

When I met Susan, I was no lothario-having been involved with six women now counting her in my twenty years and eight. I first saw a little sign of her ability to manipulate and some meanness soon after she met my parents when she asked me to help her move. She was living in recently widowed K's home but had a leased apartment near Vanderbilt's campus where she had obtained her advanced degrees. Her lease was expiring and she had bought a condo across from Nashville's elite boys' prep school which once again by coincidence, I had attended in seventh grade. I had a new Chevy Blazer and Susan asked me to help her move a few "little" things to the new condo. I drove and met her and found the small items included a home theater TV of about sixty inches. As I sweat mightily in the August heat, Susan said, "If you get hot take anything you want in the fridge or in the kitchen for that matter". As we were loading what Susan had taken to calling my "rig", a black vagrant who suffered vitiligo came up on his bicycle asking for money. I had seen him harass others in the past and quickly dismissed him with the line, "Man, I wish we had some money-then maybe we wouldn't be being evicted". He believed the lie as he saw the Blazer burdened with Susan's worldly goods and peddled off. We arrived at Susan's new abode, and after much heavy lifting on my part because of male pride, leavened somewhat by laughter when I did not know the appearance of a modern hard drive tower having not seen a computer in twelve years, I asked Susan "What do you want me to do with your space heater?" I grabbed a bottle of Diet Coke from the refrigerator. I hear, "What barn were you raised in? Don't you ask?" Evidently, Susan had forgotten the kitchen carte blanche she had given to me at the other apartment or the rules had changed. When I recapped the bottle before my first sip and began to bid adieu, I gave Susan a gentle reminder of what she had said at the place across from the Vanderbilt law school where she had incidentally studied for two years. When she saw I was leaving and realized her mistake, she apologized profusely and insisted I drink the Coke. After the remaining exertions of moving furniture and electronics around Susan and I made out with both of us climaxing in mutual masturbation. She had given me a premixed mudslide and I have always been able to hold my liquor, but whether from the hard work in the heat of the day, the release of sexual tension, the drink, or something Susan, who had been employed before I met her at poison control, put in it, I drifted off-passed out like I had been hit by a ton of bricks, naked on the floor with only Susan's quilt wrapped around me. I was deep in the arms of Morpheus when I felt Susan remove the cover to reveal my curled up in a ball nakedness. I could swear I awoke with Susan and K assessing my nudity, holding glasses of wine with Susan saying she had slipped me a Mickey. I stirred as the women looked me over and Susan gently told me to go back to sleep, "sleep...dream, it's all just a dream" in soothing, sonorous tones. Perhaps, this was merely a dream-the subconscious can play tricks after all, but never before or since, have I had a dream like it. Should I conclude that this surreal episode was a window on a lesbian liaison Susan had been having with K when they lived together? I have often wondered and knowing what I know now, I would not rule it out. The next faux pas came when Susan called and said she wanted to meet me at K's house. I drove expecting a pleasant get-together only to be confronted by an infuriated Susan saying I was a liar. Her host had been married to a police detective prior to the union with the judge and Susan had evidently had him look into me. Susan blared that she had "Done a Dun and Bradstreet" on me and that I was not rich (which I had never said-only that I came from a prominent family). She then yelled in K's drive that she had found out I didn't belong to "any of the Jewish churches". As a point of clarification, as I was leaving with the intention of never seeing her again, I explained Jews attend synagogues or temples. She seemed to realize her mistake and literally grabbed my leg and asked me to forgive her and give her a chance-I obliged.

The Family Introductions Start

I guess I raved about her to my parents and anyone else who would listen. I, of course, left the sex part out. This magnificent woman had three, count them, three master's degrees. I had a semester and two summer sessions at Vanderbilt and some community college classes. This lady was a McDonald's all-American trombone player, all-state musician in West Virginia, and had marched in both the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (incidentally past my aunt's 52 Central Park West condo) and in the RCA Dome. I couldn't have expressed more superlatives. I felt I had won the lady lottery, educated, talented, and sexy as hell to boot. Well, I invite her to come to my home which abuts Nashville's most exclusive neighborhood. As a point of reference, I am a block away from the West Meade Mansion which last sold for five million dollars a couple of years back. So, Susan comes over, looking rather like an innocent schoolgirl in workout shorts and a T-shirt. She looks younger in this outfit than in my previous two meetings with her. She is effusive in her praise of me who she barely knows to my parents and lavishes compliments on them as well. She says she is mine as long as I will have her to the assemblage. No red flags go up about this early adoration. Perhaps they should have. Her last words as she parts from me and my family are "Daniel, I'm yours-I'm sure you have plenty of other gals but from now on the line forms here (pointing at her derriere), the line starts behind me."

Good Sense to Escape

I did not know after the first chaperoned meeting if I would ever see her again. After so much water under the bridge, maybe it would have been better if I hadn't, but I had no way of knowing that then. She had just been hired by a national insurance giant to do underwriting and had to go to Florida for a month of training. By strange coincidence, she mailed me a postcard from Long Boat Key where my parents had a condo when I was young (ten years old or earlier). I hoped she would see me again on her return to Nashville. Had I known the exquisite havoc she would wreak on my life, maybe I wouldn't have wished so hard that she would return and see me. She came back and we arranged to meet at a sushi bar near my home and see a movie. The movie was First Knight perhaps emblematic of our first night alone, together. She was in a prim and proper business suit, looking like she had just emerged from a board meeting. She evidently was not over familiar with Japanese fare and chopsticks but she followed my lead and tried to use them with devastating consequences for her outfit. We had small talk about her new employment, her family-a large one, her education which made mine seem truly paltry. After the ponzu sauce bath her ensemble had, we sauntered down to the theater (it is gone too now) and intermittently watched Sean Connery and necked. At the conclusion of this late show, we found we had two of the three cars left in the parking lot. She was driving a hot, red Toyota Celica GT that reflected her red hot passion. As we prepared to part for the night-I had no expectation of sex-she asked "Is there anything I can do for you?" I had no idea if she was serious and half-joking I said, "Well, I would love a blowjob." And there between our cars in the well-lit but virtually empty parking lot that is just what she got down on her knees and gave me. Then with plaintive upturned eyes and a grey gauzy smile, she managed to mumble, "Got a napkin."

Out of the Ether

We always claimed to have been introduced by a mutual acquaintance, a judge's widow of some prominence as it happens. This was true in so far as it went, but it was also contrivance. The doyenne did introduce us, but I had never actually met K until she chaperoned my first date with Susan at a place called the Green Hills Grill that no longer exists any more than my thirteen year romance with one of the most enigmatic creatures to have stalked the earth. She was an innocent and a seductress. She was educated to a fault, yet could lapse into the Appalachian drawl and lazy grammar of a semi-literate. She had great physical beauty, but what brought her to it was a pathology that could have killed her. I was looking for a dalliance in a personal ad in Nashville's version of the Village Voice, a paper they gave away in grocery stores. I had composed some pap about doing quantum mechanics with my sleeves rolled up. God, she was lovely-her raven hair to her shoulders, her pallid skin ivory around ruby red lips, sad brown eyes that if you did not know her would capture your attention or your heart. It was not my intention to embark on anything more than a fling, but she rapidly insinuated herself into my life and that of my family who really did travel in high cotton and the same social circles as K-if not an even more rarefied society. I had no way of knowing on that casual first encounter on July 3, 1995 how much joy or pain Susan would come to bring me.