SEX MATTERS (PART III)

December 1990 + Waterveille, Maine

This vignette stars those disreputable, yet most readibly desired, facets of human behavior: (1) lust for sex, (2) anticipation of sex, and (3) sex itself.

Shortly before Christmas, a totally unexpected gift landed in my lap, so to speak. Perhaps 'on my lap' is more to the point. Connie had come in due course along the stream of life; Tania arrived in a torrent. Like the unanticipated rapids that swamp even the most experienced rafter, she suddenly appeared.

This is how it happened, I think. It is common knowlegde that there is more than one way to skin a cat. That old saw duly noted, let me say right up front for the animal lovers among us (me included) that no cat has been skinned, hung, harmed, or otherwise molested in this story. Or this entire book. Well, one cat broke a nail, but that's it.

She was Tania, Tanney to me. She was thirty or so, of medium height, and not a particulatly beautiful woman. Tanney was not hard to look at either. She was a little heavy, as if she had recently lost some, but not quite enough weight. She had reddish-brown hair and deep brown eyes that seemed to smolder with scarcely hidden passion. She was like a volcano that was always ready to do the Mount St. Helen's thing.

What drew me to her was the instant awareness that here was a hot blooded bomb shell, an explosion sure to happen. With the right fuse, that is. She had something of the Victoria Secret's model about her, the look that said, 'I can bring you some fabulous sexual thrills or I can eat you alive'. I felt that in my stomach. It was as if she had asked me to come along on a world-class roller coaster ride sitting on white hot coals.

We met in Augusta where I worked for the Maine Commission on Human Rights. Tanney was a Complainant, someone who had filed a discrimination complaint against her employer. I was the investigator assigned to her case. Investigators were forbidden from getting involved with clients while their cases were pending. With her I may have overstepped the line.

Tanney had a penchant for tight-fitting, revealing clothes. This was a bit out of place in that rather informal, yet professional workplace, where dressing like Britney Spears was most unusual. Her legs were shapely and came together in a place I very much wanted to visit. She had big breast which she generously displayed when leaning toward me in her typically low-cut blouses. She caught me eyeing her more than thrice. It didn't take long for us to make progress toward each other. Fortunately, her complaint settled, so the runway was clear for take off.

(1) Lust of sex: We would make up excuses to be together. These seemed innocent enough: a ride home, trips to the food store. After awhile she would spend some time in my apartment, leaning over me. Her hot, sweet breath torched my skin when her chest was all but in my face. She wore cheap perfume that reminded me of a low-rent Mexican hooker of my Army days, when sex was more important than the clap, or worse.

One Sunday morning we were completely alone. Sarah was away at college; everyone else I knew was out of town or caught up in personal buisiness. We spent three hours together, she in a Marilyn Monroe-like outfit: tight black skirt, fishnet hose, low-cut white blouse, and heels. Wow! That get-up on a Sunday morning. The message was clear and I was getting more impatient by the hour. "You've got to get your hands on those hooters," I thought. To say, as President Carter had, that "I had lust in my heart" was an understatement, like saying Mount Everest is tall.

(2) Anticipation of Sex: It was about then that I got a new idea. I would pay her to help me take care of my small apartment, Hitler's Bunker, you recall. My place was very ordinary, except for one feature that proved very handy: a walk in closet that had a wide, smooth, and strong wood shelf at wheelchair level. I had been able to keep my apartment tidy enough without assistance for several years, but suddenly the need arose for more help.

We self-consciously acted our married couple roles on these Saturday and Sunday morning interludes. When the work was done Tanney would hang around my place. We made sure the door was locked, curtains were drawn, and phone off the hook. It was as if I were a sexually oriented male magnet in a very small room feeling myself irrestisably drawn to a powerful female magnet in hot pants and a halter top. The anticipation was exquisite.

My imagination ran wild. My heart was close to all-out fibrillation, like waiting breathlessly for the Pecker Checker on nights gone by. I pictured scenes of the most outrageous sort. These invariably ended in mutual sexual collapse, like San Francisco after the quake. I had to move this affair up a notch and consummate or implode into ashes. You can only get to the brink so many times before you lose interest, as Kissinger's brinkmanship diplomacy proved.

(3) Sex itself: One Saturday morning, we food shopped and came back to my apartment. I felt tension in the air stronger than usual, as if I were watching a fuse burn closer and closer to the dynamite in my bedroom. No one else was around. The door was locked, curtains closed, phone off.

The apartment was quieter than a morgue on a holiday, like the stillness of the wind before the hurricane begins. Tanney walked toward me; she was about six feet away. I put my hands out to her beckoning her ever closer. We were two sub-atomic particles drawn together by the all-powerful strong nuclear force.

At about the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), I removed the sides of my chair. She was on my lap. We were lip-locked and throwing clothes here and there. Our hands moved all over each other. Those magnificent hooters were all I had hoped for. I felt I was in a free-floating dream state, as we touched, fondled, kissed, and panted. "This is great"' I thought after a while, "but it can't stop here". My Eureka moment arrived just in time. "The closet!"

I headed there at NASCAR speed, with Tanney on my lap. She seemed a little bewildered, especially when we got to the shelf. I stopped, locked my brakes, and gently helped lift her up and onto that shelf. I thought that that magnificent wooden shelf had been constructed in that location with that much holding capacity at that exact height by some knowing crippled carpenter. Tanney needed no help, once she was there she saw where this was going. She was a quick study.

In less time than it takes to say it, Tanney removed her remaining clothes. I pulled up under the shelf between those fleshy thighs. She grasped the shelf with both hands, leaned back and held on tight. I could hear her gasp for breath as I got ever closer to her nest of spicery, to quote Richard III.

Tanney moan like a cat in heat. Her body quivered, her breathing grew faster. Her moaning became louder and more urgent. Like Connie, Tanney got God mixed up in the business. Her prayers appeared to be answered.

What of your salacious author?

I managed to complete our shelf activity more or less intact. I had all I could do to keep enough oxygen in my lungs, so an not to do brain damage.Sensing that the bulk of the work had been accomplished, I backed up and we resumed our sexual alligator wrestling. As our passion subsided, Tanney whispered repeatedly, "yes, yes, yes" I felt proud and manly, like with Connie. Only this time there was no papaverine or other aid (unless you count the closet).

I had been planning to move to Texas in February. Arrangement had been made. I had accepted a lawyer job there and could not go back on my commitment. A flaming fling was about the last thing I had imagined. I knew I had to tell her about Texas. Her solution was enthralling, "Well, we'd better have our fun before you go".

I thought I was hearing things. Perhaps I was a sex-starved guy hearing what I wanted to hear. No, I heard what I heard. Tania was serious about having fun. It was written all over her face and maybe other parts of her as well.

The next couple of months were a thrill ride. We were eager to please each other. It was hard to tell who was more committed to our roller coaster. When it came time to move to Texas, it was very difficult to say good bye to her. I sincerely cared for her, as I had Jean and Connie. We had become friends as well as lovers. Tanney I wrote this one for you:

Tanney gal, I miss you still,
I think, my dear, I always will,
our days were always thrill by thrill,
and happy times in Waterville,
you opened for me that safe deposit,
hidden away in my very own closet.