The Blanket Policy

Our erotic escapades were far from over. One day during what became an eight month cohabitation, I went to Kroger, the neighborhood grocery for resupply. When I returned, Susan told me to open my mouth and close my eyes. I found myself licking a cup diameter silver-white wet spot on Susan's almost new Martha Stewart red and black tartan blanket. It was syrupy sweet and a tad waxy. I pretty much knew what it was without asking. Susan chimed in, "That's girl cum, I jilled off on it while you were gone. Now, lick some more out of me," she said as she opened her white terrycloth robe. I managed to generate some more fluid. We had some wild times until her sister came in to take an ABC class and work as server during her time off from teaching school.

Up in Smoke

Susan had a computer but no Internet access. She decided to accept a free offer from AOL at the condo and connected her desktop. I had earlier had Susan research capital punishment which in spite of my doctrinaire conservative positions on most things, I wholeheartedly oppose, on Vanderbilt's computers and she also printed me off some porno to make the technology seem less daunting and to rouse my interests in all the web had to offer. I had never been on the Internet and had not been on a computer in more than a decade. We browsed the web a bit and somehow the subject of women being able to pick up dollar bills and smoke cigarettes with their vaginas came up. I knew Susan very occasionally would smoke on long drives, she said to stay awake. One evening soon after the vaginal dexterity talk, I arrived and Susan said, "Watch this." She was indeed able to lift, somewhat awkwardly, a dollar bill from the edge of a table with her snatch. Then she reclined on the bed and smoked a cigarette with her cunt. She declared, "You know you don't see that comin' down the river on a flatboat everyday, that's some fine West "By God" Virginia pussy." I had to agree with her on that one.

Anything But Typical

During that glorious summer, Susan and I had scratched the primal itch on the Catholic campus near her home, at my house on one of our rare visits there on the living room floor, with that episode starting with her demonstrating her new found flexibility gained in a yoga class with me assisting by pushing down on her back, and ending with me having deep penetrating intercourse with her legs locked behind her head. We had our really peak experience in the condo pool one evening when in spite of the chance of being observed or perhaps to Susan because of it, I fucked her aided by the buoyancy provided by the water and she had a thirty minute sustained orgasm. She then finished me orally with me in the shallow end and her on the edge, receiving my ejaculation so far back in the throat that she did not even know I came. We even visited my grandparents' house which I rarely entered-some would consider it an abandoned property, I prefer to think of it as dormant, awaiting a return to former opulence. Susan could not believe my family had a maid's quarters, a reliquary of a bygone time when even the middle class, a hell of a long way from millionaires, had live in staff. She was amazed at my grandfather's smoking jacket, too small and tattered for me to wear. We had sex on my grandmother's red velvet bed that can only be described as bordello bright. One afternoon, while driving across town to the One Hundred Oaks Mall, Susan asked me if I would see anything wrong if she had sex with an older woman with matronly breasts. She was introducing me to her infatuation with Dolly Parton. She was also broaching a lesbian tendency she possesses which she may or may not have acted on during our relationship. I asked her outright as we drove if she wanted to have sex with women and she candidly, earnestly, hissed, "Yes." Taking this as an invitation to explore every man's erotic fantasy and thinking I had her approval, I put an ad in the newspaper she had found me in for a woman to join us. I had a shockingly high number of responses, but Susan seemed mortified and angry when I shared this information with Susan whose blessing I thought I had. Of course, I did not attempt to independently pursue any of these bisexual chicks. I thought I had misconstrued her desires, but one night we decided to attend a play because a high school classmate of mine was in it. She had enjoyed some success in Hollywood, even appearing in a series. Her performance was good, the play was entertaining, and at the end of the show, Susan, who had spent the earlier part of the day auditioning for Dollywood and was wearing a tank top and tight leather miniskirt, wanted to go get some alcohol at a store downtown and continue the party. The liquor store is right next to a strip club/adult bookstore and suddenly Susan wanted to go in there. We browsed dildos, vibrators, and porno magazines and ended up visiting the strippers in the labyrinthine club down below. Susan was obviously excited by the sinuous movements of the other women. I excused myself briefly to use the restroom and when I came back, she was talking to an ordinary looking, small middle aged white man in a short sleeve oxford shirt with a beard and glasses. She must have smelled money though as she had not approached one of the salesmen in suits who didn't have a pot to piss in, but one of the publishers of the Tennessean, an editor, and large shareholder in Gannett. I did not like the idea that she was in close conversation with a man in a strip bar, but he was engaging and non-threatening enough and a coreligionist, but he did say he wanted a threesome with us which was a total no go for me although Susan offered herself to him for money and he declined her inflated price. Susan saw the displeasure I evinced at her trying to whore herself. She was then approached by a couple of Mexicans who thought she worked at the club. I disabused them of this with, "No-mi mujer" turning out my rusty high school Spanish, "No puta, mi mujer." They understood and left. Susan was still enthralled with the strippers, and maybe somewhat to placate me but I think now more for herself, bought us a private dance from a mousy brunette with large breasts. She fed me the dancer's breasts and nipples as they ground on each other with me beside her on the small couch. The stripper wanted to know if we would be around at four a.m. when she got off work because she wanted to go home with us with no charge for the service. I did not bring up the offer with Susan because I was almost certain she would accept it and I was afraid of what we might catch. We left at two-thirty in the morning and Susan fucked me like an animal at the condo, her intensity unmatched in all the time I was with her. The weird scene of the whole night revealed what Susan really wanted to be when she dropped her inhibitions.

The Princess Dies

I never felt closer to Susan than on our return from West Virginia. The newlyweds were about right behind us as Susan and I split the drive back to Nashville. The just marrieds planned to attend Fan Fair now called the CMA Country Music Festival with tickets to see Montgomery Gentry and Confederate Railroad- neither of which I had even heard of at the time. Their arrival happened to coincide with Susan's birthday. They came in at a late hour with Susan's sister driving and her brother-in-law chewing tobacco in the passenger seat, using a soda bottle as a spittoon. Due to the lateness, around ten and the prospect of a free birthday meal for Susan-I suggested we eat at Denny's when they pulled in and announced they were hungry. I was a bit miffed when we arrived at the restaurant and was told they had discontinued the birthday promotion, so miffed in fact I did not order for myself. The next evening after the festivities had ended for the new marrieds, I offered to take them to a real dinner to properly celebrate the honeymoon and Susan's previous day's birthday. We ate at a Japanese restaurant in Green Hills that was owned by a former employee of the sushi bar my family regularly ate at, where we have literally spent over a hundred thousand dollars in twenty or so years. The last time Susan and I had dined at the place in Green Hills was the previous Halloween when a bizarre incident happened. The food was fine, the service impeccable, but when we went to leave two costumed couples were chatting, leaning against my car. I wasn't over-happy about that but said nothing, preferring to avoid a confrontation and drive away, but the devil fellow and his date refused to move from my car's path, preventing me from backing out. I rolled down my window and gently said we had to get going and asked them to make way. They ignored me. I asked two more times if they could move aside and they looked at me, seemingly annoyed, and refused to move. I then honked the horn only to be met by the guy in the devil costume, irate, probably drunk, stoned, or a combination of the two, moving from the rear bumper, but not out of the way as I requested but right at my driver's side door. Susan yelled, "Don't!" But I could not resist such provocation and though the fellow was quite tall, six-six to six-eight, I raced to confront him. He swung at me, I ducked and he missed, managing only to punch my car, seeming to injure his hand, and I managed in the close confines between the cars to draw and open a pocketknife I was carrying. At this point, his date and the other couple he was talking with intervened, pulling him back, but we were shouting a stream of invective at each other. They finally cleared the path and I backed the car out and drove away. So far as I knew, no one called the police over the altercation. None of what had happened then reflected on the restaurant, per se, except in as much as we were immediately in front of it and no one came out to assist us or stop it. But on this day after birthday, I had concluded the chances of running into a madman in a devil costume were pretty slim. We ate, I spent around $120 because of the large sushi order which was fine; I did not want to come across as cheap after not eating at Denny's. The food was OK although the portions were scant for what I paid. I noticed an Asian party was being feted with enormous portions and ours certainly seemed short by way of comparison, although we were ordering the same things. I had heard that the owner of this restaurant did not particularly cater to Caucasian customers but really bent over backwards for fellow Japanese. The groom claimed great experience with Japanese food from being stationed on Guam back in service and visiting Japan but the new bride seemed less comfortable. The honeymooners, no not Gleason and Audrey Meadows but our West Virginia pair, wrapped up in Nashville and headed back for the hills. Susan wanted me to help clean up the condo and I ended up staying there through  June and much of that summer, occasionally being picked up by or meeting my parents as a couple for dinner and heading the five miles down the road to my parents' home only a few times. I was walking around much of the time in shorts and t-shirts borrowed from Susan. I was really quite domestic, doing much of the cooking and cleaning. One night I made sweet and sour shrimp with pineapple over rice. It was comparable to what Susan would have ordered in a restaurant, but I was greatly insulted when she claimed to have eaten it all but actually had scraped almost all of it into her garbage that she was too obtuse to realize I was largely responsible for emptying.I hoped it was her eating disorder and not lack of appreciation for my efforts that caused her to discard my delicacy. I had mixed relations with Susan's neighbors. The lady immediately across the hall was elderly and shared my last name, and I often found myself helping her with packages while Susan was at "work." Susan seemed to be working long hours while I was at the condo. I was often there alone eighteen hours a day, reading, doing chores, watching cable. Susan's other neighbors were the director emeritus of one of the Vanderbilt medical school departments who was afflicted with Alzheimer's and his wife and an attorney who would gain notoriety later in Nashville's infamous Perry March case and his family. My first experience with the doctor, who was the major contributor to Vanderbilt's libraries of Twain and Lincolnalia collections, next door was when he managed to lock himself out of his office and Susan and his wife asked me to pick the lock which I managed after having some experience playing around with locks as a child. The neighbor I had a problem with was a Roman Catholic priest. I would follow the laundry room rules meticulously as is my wont, only to find our clothes removed from the washer or dryer and strewn variously on the floor or in the utility sink. I left a few handwritten notes suggesting others follow the posted rules as well, but the vandalism continued. I had no idea who was doing it, even though before I started carrying my detergent, bleach, and fabric softener back to our own condo, the mischief maker was liberating it for his/her own use. One evening, I decided to lay a trap as it were for the culprit, and returned when Susan's clothes were mid-cycle only to find the priest who was in his seventies and was wearing his short-sleeve shirt complete with clerical collar, unceremoniously dumping her clothes, waiting with his own basket to replace them. He started to chide and lecture me. I told him I wasn't an altar boy, wasn't Catholic, and that he was in no position to lecture me. He said he had more right to the laundry than "renters" which was not true and which in any case, Susan wasn't. He grabbed my wrist and I shoved him away with sufficient force that he was cowering, literally whimpering in a corner of the utility room. We never had a problem with the laundry again. One evening that August, I helped Susan bake a pie, making my first meringue in the process. I thought I was assisting for us on one of her rare nights off. She never indicated anything else while I was doing everything but make the crust. As it turned out, other than licking spoons which were plenty good, I did not even get to taste my own creation. She had me baking to ingratiate herself to the wife of the doctor next door who she was occasionally watching for pay when she was not otherwise employed. I was left wondering if my pie was as good as it seemed and upset that Susan had not told me it was for a neighbor, in which case I would have suggested we double batch. I was watching the cable when a headline broke that Princess Diana had been injured in an automobile crash. I remember distinctly an interview with a noted royal watcher who said he thought the wreck was not so serious, that the Princess had sustained an injured arm. In any event, assessing the event with some gravity, I trotted next door to play town crier. Susan seemed a little peeved to see me but when I explained the reason for my interruption, she relented and we and the rest of the world that had any interest marshaled our prayers to save our true to life Tinkerbell.

A Wedding in West Virginia

I had met one of Susan's two sisters, the baby of the family and her mother but had not been introduced to anyone else. I had heard enough family lore though that I felt I knew everybody. Susan had told me tales of her maternal grandmother living all over the world while her "surrogate" grandfather had assisted one of the major tobacco companies establish global production. Her actual grandfather had been killed by police chasing someone else who fired indiscriminately into a crowded Ohio River ferry, missing the suspect but mortally wounding grandad who subsequently fell into a watery grave. I had heard of an aunt who worked for President Johnson and had married a wealthy Richmond, Virginia businessman. I heard of an uncle who had the Bingham connection who had left the Episcopalian ministry to become a hospital administrator in Naples, Florida. All these people and events seemed real enough but Susan also had a game of one-upsmanship going on with me. I mentioned in passing my father had been a pilot, so suddenly, Susan's father was a pilot as well. Whatever highly placed family-connection I had, Susan felt the need to do one better. She could eclipse all my meager family ties and was also a sudden expert in Jewish geography. Any conversation my parents were having, some I was involved in, some I wasn't, some people discussed I knew, some I didn't, Susan felt the need to chime in as if she had intimate knowledge of all parties involved when in most cases, she knew none of the participants. On matters political though, Susan, on the surface, seemed in perfect accord with me. I am an ardent Zionist and sensibly to the right. I thought it odd that Susan never offered a word of discord or tried to debate me about any of my worldviews. I was glad that she seemed as convicted of her conservative beliefs as I am of mine. I became skeptical that we were actually as simpatico politically as Susan pretended when I found her on the mailing list for a feminist, leftist coven, the Margaret Cunningham Women's Center of Vanderbilt University or bringing their proto-lesbian bilge back to her condo. What they were propagating was diametrically opposed to what I believe. I did not push the matter with Susan at that time because we were preparing for a big event, her baby sister's impending nuptials which I thought would be my chance to meet her super-accomplished kinfolk. I accepted the invitation, and took the opportunity with some worry whether I would measure up for her family. This trepidation was acquitted but not for any of my own inadequacies when we arrived in West Virginia. Susan borrowed my car to make a wedding preparation run and left me with her father and the man who was about to become her brother-in-law. I found myself being interrogated about Israel's conduct and asked, not in so many words, about the dual loyalty of Jews. I responded that so far as I knew anyone in my family who was ever in service wore only the American uniform and that my uncle died fighting for this country. There questions displayed the kind of insidious anti-semitism that I had been exposed to a few times prior in my life. I left my sarcasm back in Nashville, and did not try the "go ask the Israeli ambassador routine." It was a real eyeopener but maybe it should not have been as I had heard all my life of my father's formative experiences of being hated for being a Jew as he grew up on the Virginia-West Virginia border seventy plus years before. Susan's father is physically imposing to say the least; he was really a state championship football lineman in his high school days, but I am not sure if he played college ball at Georgia Tech as Susan claimed or if that was more bluster. I asked him about his "pilot" status and he said Susan must have been confused, that he had only been in the Air Force as the soon to be groom had been. Susan and I stayed at a nearby motel and I offered to pay but was told I was their "guest". I felt like the ultimate outsider at the little country church on the hill wedding to which Susan arrived just a tad plastered, having imbibed much of the day, starting in the car in the early morning. The bridal party had me hold the wedding gift money while photos and video were being snapped and shot. I thought at the time that this was a vote of confidence as a sign of trust, but I realize now, I probably literally would have been killed if any of my conduct seemed askew. One of the groomsmen was a cousin of the groom who looked just like Sam Elliot who I learned later had the same genetic disease as the groom and who subsequently committed suicide. Another guest named Terry who tried to make me feel more a part of the family I learned was also felled by a heart attack shortly thereafter at too young an age. The man Susan regarded as her grandfather who held a doctorate and was well-traveled seemed to hold me in slight regard, but I may have been unduly unctuous toward him since I thought he was the caliber person whose opinion held great stock with the rest of the assemblage. I helped decorate a school gymnasium which was serving as the hall for the reception. I only met one of Susan's three brothers, a musician whose education and accomplishments Susan puffed but who I was a tad afraid might pound me for fucking his sister. The other two brothers I was told did not "do" weddings. Of everyone I met, only this brother and Terry seemed to bear me no malice. I made a hearty attempt to catch the garter only to be outfought by a wild eyed redneck. That was an omen.

Such a Nice Neighborhood

I was not a jogger when I met Susan, but because she was at the time so committed to getting and staying thin, would jog/walk with her around her Cherokee Park neighborhood or near my West Meade home. These are two upscale areas of Nashville with the street we often walked near my home populated by music luminaries including Crystal Gayle. We would cover miles, the entire length of the street of my youth and my grandparents home Jocelyn Hollow, both ways. I was amazed on such a seemingly sedate street that passersby in cars twice attacked us, one throwing a half empty bottle of beer at us and another a lit cigarette as they drove past. Fortunately, the assaults produced no substantive damage, only anger on our part. On one such forced march, I was evidently stung by a deer tick as I became quite ill, eventually being diagnosed by Dr. Khoury, who was notable for treating singers, with Lyme disease. Susan did not appear over-concerned with my suffering. On my recovery, after completing the round of prescribed antibiotics which temporarily also cured my having to pull out induced prostatitis, we resumed our walks (runs). One evening a beautiful late middle aged Golden Retriever approached us whimpering, carrying a shoe, near Richland Creek. The way the dog, who was obviously intelligent, carried on, Susan and I thought we were having our Timmy has fallen down the well moment. We surmised that the owner of the shoe had been hit by a car, fallen in the creek, had a heart attack, or that the shoe was somehow symbolic of grave distress. I followed the dog toward the garage of a corner house and was able to read her tag. Her name was Cinnamon and she belonged to that house. Just then, one of her owners emerged. I explained my presence and concern, and the lady assured Susan and I there was no distress, the dog merely wanted to play, never met a stranger, and brought the battered tennis shoe as a "welcome" gift. Susan and I would often jog with Cinnamon and/or a younger Golden Retriever named Ginger who lived next to my father's brother several blocks away down the same street. The course of life seemed relatively normal for Susan and I when we were together, except she continued to bring books, magazines, schoolwork, and anything else to the table eating in or dining out, so she would have something to do other than eat. When she did eat, I would often find the remnants of her throwing up around my bathroom at home and she would frequently stop up my sink with hair and vomit. In spite of knowing the inconvenience,mess, and expense, it caused, she would wash, color, and treat her hair in my sink all through our relationship. Susan told me her hair would have been grey-white had she not colored it. I told her I thought Emmylou Harris, who allowed her hair to age naturally, was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen as I would encounter her periodically in West Nashville. Susan never let my opinion stand in the way of her narcissism and continued to keep it over-processed black all through our time together, even as my eight year old female cousin remarked how phony it looked in an uncouth moment at my Aunt Bucky's house. Susan butchered the expression but conveyed collars and cuffs indeed matched. Susan was so taken aback she offered to show the little girl. One weekend, my parents drove to Atlanta for my cousin's wedding. Susan and I jogged my neighborhood on the night my folks departed. When we halted to catch our breath, Susan let me know her expectations of me for our continued relationship. These were her suddenly enunciated demands: 1.) That I have a half million dollar annual income. 2.) That I have at least two million dollars in assets in my own right. 3.) That I be a man and buy a home of my own that would become Susan's in the event of my demise or the dissolution of our prospective marriage (the eventuality of a divorce Susan said would never happen if I fulfilled the aforementioned stipulations). I was shocked by this fantasy, told her under any such circumstances, I would not be able or even want to continue seeing her. She relented some what to allow me a $200,000 to quarter million income, and reduced the allowance for net assets to one million dollars. I still told her she was looking at the wrong Mr. Goodman and if she wanted that, she should marry my father. For the second time in the relationship, I was deeply disillusioned with Susan and though I had been as private about our relationship as I could considering I lived in my parents' house, I felt compelled to share Susan's bizarre behavior with my folks and called them in Georgia to see if they thought I should continue seeing Susan. My Dad offered little input, leaving me to my own devices, but my mom encouraged me to stick by Susan who my mom thought was so blessed with intellect and so many talents.