The Cougar

There had long been a history of cougars in this college town. In the early-1960's Steve's hometown, Bozeman Montana's few thousands of citizens and students were gripped with curiosity when a letter signed by "A. Providence" to Playboy Magazine's Adviser column advertised the existence of a free-love practicioner among the faculty at the University. "My husband is very open minded and does not object if I discretely take lovers, and I have had several to our house on South Willson Avenue. I especially appreciate the intellectual vigor of the student body."

A few years too young at the time of the letter, Steve was nevertheless keenly aware of its existence, having obtained the back issues. He remained eagerly oblivious to the possibility that the letter was a hoax, the certainty that the Playboy Adviser had nothing whatever to offer him in the understanding of his sexuality. Many late evenings were spent in yearning passion for hairless dollies and in a considered reading of the text of that short item in the August 1962 edition. "She must have come to a bad end by now--but what if she didn't..." South Willson was just two blocks from his family's home on South Third.

But those years passed, and with each passing month, real knowledge, events, women--first Laurie, then Candice, Therese, Leslie, Janet, just for a moment, Jane Hawkins. Steve left town for school, returned wounded at last by love, Roni.

Nobody liked his paintings, nobody ever liked the paintings, but they passed him out of art school anyway for some reason. It just hadn't worked out with the college girls at MSU, the state's Ag school. Hi Alice. Were you supposed to get them drunk? That was always tough without money. But then when you're out of college all you desire is the co-eds but they don't want you much.

Then somehow, suddenly, he got work and everything changed. It was one of his hardest and yet funnest jobs. Steve hired on word-of-mouth. "Andy's looking for a couple guys. He says if you show up in Francis the job's yours." Francis was 60 miles out across the valley where the Bridger mountain range was broken by a railroad gap. It turned out to be working for the Milwaukee Railroad line, out by 16-Mile Canyon, "gandy-dancing," doing track repair.

Francis was a small siding with an equipment shed, hardly a place at all, except for the name. A row of 4 converted boxcars served as a dormitory, a flatcar on which the big yellow lifter was transported. Things hadn't changed much since the old days of the railroad, each morning began with a ride through the frigid air of the canyon on wooden benches in an open crew car. And then it would get hot, the heat shimmering off the fractured granite walls that lined 16-Mile creek.

It was Steve's first time on the wrong end of an idiot stick, but it wasn't the last. He found he liked to shovel, and the only other things you can do with one are lean on it or kill snakes. This was rattlesnake country. It wasn't long before he was hell for strong. Take them salt pills an smoke a joint an move that gravel from here to there all day. Steve had joined the X-gang right at the start of the season, and right away he made friends with the two other guys in the sleeping car, Greg Bleeker, a ranch kid from out north of Big Timber, and Kazuo Matsuyama, formerly of Japan. Most of the other labor were chinese and mexicans.

Then, every day, after you thought you were going to die, Andy would give the word and everyone would come down from the tracks and dive naked into the pools of mountain water below. Steve remembered looking fearfully over the edge of a colossal boulder the first time, wondering if anyone knew for sure it was deep enough, before, fuckit, he was in the air and aiming his arms into the tiny space between the rocks below. It wasn't the first time he'd gone ahead and taken a chance like that. Or the last. A second later he was splashing in the green waters, calling out to his buddies to join him. There was nothing better.

After they swam he and Greg Bleeker would pull themselves out on the rocks to dry. "Jesus you're skinny, Skaar," Bleeker would tease him. Steve obediently tensed his stomach, the muscles rippling deeply. "You're fat as a big old bull, Bleeker. Where'd you get that root?" Steve stared with envy at Greg Bleeker's dink. It curved almost hard, uncircumcised, from a tangle of still-moist public hair.

"Hey Bleeker, what word begins with an 'F' and ends with a 'CK'"

"Fuck, I don't know," Bleeker answered with a lazy smile, a gap between his big front teeth, "you know I don't spell so good..."

"Firetruck!" Steve crowed. "What's long and hard and full of seamen? --A submarine!"

"That's a good one," Bleeker said, not getting it. "I'll have to remember that."

Driving spikes will do good things for your shoulders and arms too. They use about a 10 pound mallet, with each end of the head tapered long to a flat point, the long ends made to be swung across the rail to drive the 6 inch square spikes deep into wooden railroad ties. Later in the evening the guys would show off their skills--the firm tap to set the blunt spike into the slot, into the open grain of the wood, then the full arch of an overhead swing that put all its energy suddenly into a sweet pushing point, what Steve's foreman Andy Quintana called "el em-poo-hey".

Weekends were their own, the sixty-miles of dirt roads no obstacle. Bleeker had a yellow GMC pickup on its final legs, it would get them there and back. Usually they hit the bars, but as usual it seemed like Bleeker was doing better with the cowgirls than Steve, who was like poison in this town by now. Usually they would hit the trail around midnight for the long drive back to Francis. Mondays could be rough.

That particular weekend in August when he met Arlene was special. After 2 months the X-gang's work in 16-Mile Canyon was done. The crew would be moving on, to a location outside Butte, the mining town, that Monday. Later in the fall Everett, Washington. Steve thought it might be as good a way as any to get out of Dodge City for good. "What do you think, Greg? Think you might move on with the crew?"

"Nah," said Bleeker. "Back to Big Timber, back to the ranch."

Steve left Bleeker behind him at the "Krazy Eights," a card club on the outskirts of town. "Whatever happens," he said, "I'll see you here in this parking lot midnight Sunday. Don't get too laid." A little bit of advice he ended up needing to give himself.

He kept his thumb out, but nobody picked him up. It didn't matter. His parents' house was only a few miles away. He took a shower and changed clothes, talked to Dad for a while. Then he left and went up the hill to the University Library. Even though he had graduated years before the school kept drawing him back.

Steve caught a view of himself in the glass panels of the library's central fountain area. Way too skinny, but wiry from a month of wrangling railroad ties into place, he was having to cinch in the waist of the canvas painters pants he favored, his long hair tied loosely behind his neck in a way that seemed slightly girlish. Do I? he wondered again.

The second floor of the library was humanities, which also included the magazines and science journals. Steve saw Arlene as soon as he came up the stairs, perched at a little study desk, her legs crossed at the ankles, one hand pressed between her thighs, the other tangled into her hair in exasperation as she read. Steve smiled. That was the way it had always been for him, too. Thank God that was over.

She lifted her attention from the book for just a moment, her blue eyes vacant as she first turned toward him, then suddenly right there as they went wide in open examination. Steve felt the sudden thrill, allowed himself to be drawn forward across the study area before issuing an apologetic smile and veering away to look at the latest magazines. It was "Science" he kept up on, he'd missed a couple of weeks.

What was it about her that made him so nervous? Once when he looked up from his reading she was staring straight at him, only somehow not meeting his eyes, as though she was somehow taking in his whole body, not just his face. Steve was confused. Even from two tables away he could see that she was not his type, much too old, not that she wasn't pretty in a way...could she be coming on to him?

Steve stopped pretending to understand the article on the bio-chemistry of firefly communications he was reading, checked the lady out in return, while it was her turn to appear engrossed in her study. Her wavy black hair formed a dark enclosing halo around a delicate face, a narrow nose topped by a pair of black-frame reading glasses, a small mouth with plum red lip-sticked lips.

She wore a tight white blouse with a frilly front, a little blue bow tied at the neck. Like a teacher in high school--that was it, she had to be a teacher, maybe one of those who had to come to the ag school every few years to refresh their credentials. She had on new blue jeans fitted over cowboy boots with pointed toes, a tourquoise and cream inlay. Some kind of fashion statement? Interesting.

It turned out she was tiny, delicate even. She sighed and shifted, pointing a tiny finger to the corner of her slightly open mouth as she considered her reading. Steve liked the way that her skinny shoulders tightened the blouse across her front, small breasts outlined beneath it. For some reason she didn't seem much like a townie. Maybe it was the evident lack of a bra beneath the tight white fabric.

"Excuse me," she finally spoke, a throaty whisper that seemed to fill the silence of the library. "I was just...having trouble studying. I saw you over here. Are you a student at MSU?" She tapped her forefinger on the leatherette binder she carried. "Would you mind if I ask you a few questions? You see, I'm a sociologist. Arlene Hale, Ph.D," she added, extending her hand, a diamond wedding ring. Steve nearly broke up. Faculty?!

"Sure," he said, taking her small hand. "I'm Steve." Her palm was warm, faintly moist. "I mean, no, not for a few years. I DID graduate from here, though, if that counts," Steve said. "I'll come back and enroll again, if that will help..." Maybe it was that beautiful mouth, her rouged red lips fronting a secret smile. As though reading it in the lines of experience, Steve became suddenly even more aware of Arlene's age, the woman maybe in her mid-thirties, maybe even older. How much older?

She was making a regretful expression, but for some reason his answer had only seemed to make her even more interested. She smiled and leaned toward him on a tipped study chair. "Oh, I'm sorry, yes, that would preclude you from that particular study, but there are others." She paused, but didn't continue for a few seconds, still smiling. "Would you be offended if some of the questions were of a personal nature?" she asked finally, her blue eyes widening. "Would you object if I sat down?"

"Not a bit. I don't have anything to hide," Steve said, amused, thinking of a couple of things he had to hide. Some psychology thing? What, was she going to ask him about his sex life? That would be pretty much his jack-off techniques at the moment.

"Oh, I think all of us have a few things we'd prefer to conceal," she said, flashing him a knowing look as she rummaged in a small purse to retrieve her reading glasses. "I very much appreciate your candid responses." He'd had them before, these chicks that always wanted to get into your head. But here was something much more exciting, like maybe she was already there, Freddy. "Ask away," he said hoarsely.

"The survey is completely anonymous," the woman informed Steve huskily. "There's absolutely no possibility of your responses becoming public, except as a component of a statistical whole."

Steve nodded. That made sense. Standard science stuff. "What's the survey about, then?"

"The relationship between traditional and innovative sex-role adaptations and innovative sex-role adaptations and sexual satisfaction among a homogeneous sample of middle-aged Caucasian women." Arlene Hale recited. A touch of color spread across her pale cheeks, but her eyes didn't waver from his.

"You're kidding," Steve laughed nervously.

"Can you think of any examples of what I'm talking about? No? Well, I think the questions themselves will give you the gist of it."

"How do you feel about females initiating oral intercourse?" Arlene shifted her chair closer to show him the options:

A) Very positive, would welcome such advances
B) Only in a committed relationship
C) Never have oral intercourse

Well, you could put it in their hand, but it was downright rude to put it in their mouth without asking or it being offered, so yeah, A). "Was that the right answer?"

"There are no right answers," Arlene answered. She checked the box for A) with a flourish. "Just between you and I, though, I think that's an excellent response. Now how about this one?"

"How do you react when a woman wants to engage in sex in the dominant position?"

A) I feel uneasy in the subordinate position
B) Comfortable, I enjoy this type of sexual activity
C) Don't know

"That means on top, facing the male," Arlene noted.

"I know what it means. Hmm. I guess it would depend on if she knew what she was doing. C). Wait, that's pretty chauvinistic, isn't it?"

"In the case where the given answer is C)," Arlene Hale went on relentlessly, "The survey is designed to ask a follow-on question. Would you say you are:

A) Very likely
B) Not so likely

"To request that your sexual partner assume the dominant position during intercourse" She regarded Steve closely.

Steve went red. "A) Very likely"

The interviewer carefully but firmly marked the box for B) and began to gather up the survey materials. "I'd like to thank you for your cooperation today, Steve."

"Wait!" Steve squeaked. "Just because I said I wouldn't ask doesn't mean I wouldn't DO it."

Arlene Hale laughed. "I think that's refreshingly honest. Steve, I wonder if you would permit me to buy you a drink. That is, you ARE twenty-one, aren't you?"

For a second Steve flushed with anger. Did she think being old was some kind of virtue? "Of course I am!"

The Cat's Paw Saloon had taken its name from the University mascot, the bobcat, but still served as a convenient symbol for a roving cougar. Arlene Hale pulled her dark purple VW bug off of North Seventh and into the gravel parking lot. On the way Steve had been telling her about working on the railroad, growing up in Bozeman, about the painting. In return he learned that she was from Rhode Island, graduated from a famous girls' college there, after which she had somehow ended up in bum-fuck Montana, the only place that would give a lady Ph.D a job. It was fine. One thing she knew how to do was write, and she had landed a couple of good research grants from the federal government. "I hope...I hope you don't think..."

"It's okay, I really don't like the town that much myself," Steve said.

"No, that's not what I mean, oh, never mind." Arlene touched him for the first time, her hand coming off the VW's gearshift in the time-honored method, cupping Steve's knee. But it felt good, friendly. Without thinking Steve reached out and stroked her soft cheek.

Inside the Cats Paw Steve figured there was about a 80% chance of seeing someone he knew, hopefully not Jane Hawkins, whom he still hoped would someday forgive his hairy back. "Maybe see some friends of mine here!" he shouted into the noise of the bar, "Let me get the drinks. You can pay me back if you want. White wine?" He figured she would drink white wine. Arlene nodded. "Red wine, thank you. Burgundy, please."

Sure enough, it was Alan Lakey, sitting alone at the bar with a line of long-neck Buds on the bar when Steve walked up to get the drinks. "Hey Steve, who's the old lady? Quite a fox."

"Screw you, Lakey, you're sick. Friend of my parents. I'm showing her around. Do me a favor--don't come over."

After the intimacy of the VW the throbbing music and bright lights of the bar just seemed wrong. They made their way to the back near the card games where it was a little quieter, sat stiffly for a few minutes at a small table there.

"Oh, I like this song," Arlene said brightly. It was "Do you feel like I do," by Peter Frampton. "Listen, he makes his guitar say the words. Isn't that great? Plus I think he's just so incredibly sexy..." Steve scowled without meaning to. She thought Peter Frampton was sexy? Why was that making him suddenly jealous?

He saw her mouthing something, cupped his palm to his ear. She stood, came closer, leaned over him, whispering, "Let's get out of here. I know somewhere we can go."

The taste of the red wine was foul in her mouth, the best worst taste he'd ever tasted. Steve kissed her again and again, pressing her small body back against the door of her car, his big hands around her small waist, her breath coming hot against his throat. Finally she ducked free and opened the door. "Let's go to my place. We can have another drink there."

In the car Arlene tipped her chin beneath his, her lips reaching upwards to meet his, her delicate tongue dancing. For a long minute they battered more kisses at each other's fallen defenses, both needing to surrender, both eager to demand further gifts. Just because he could, Steve nuzzled her ear and cradled her slim body like a baby's as he pulled loose the thin blue bow-tie of her blouse with his teeth. "Where? How far?" Suddenly he was feeling some urgency, a big boner twisting upright in his JC Penny's.

It turned out to be only a few blocks away, a single-story house on Beale St, near to the fairgrounds.

"Where's your husband?" Steve asked suspiciously despite his lust as she pulled the VW into the driveway and turned off the lights. It had been hard not to notice Arlene's wedding ring. In those days getting caught in the act seemed to be a specialty of Steve's. They were separated, Arlene told him a little defensively, "He's back at his stupid ranch in Big Timber."

Inside the front door Steve waited impatiently as Arlene scampered before him, turning on a small lamp, adjusting a cushion. Steve took in an ornate sitting room full of delicate furniture, antiques, chairs and small tables. A big mirror with a gold border. "Wow," he said admiringly, sprawling back on the more functional sofa that sat opposite the mirror. "Wanna be in the dominant position?" he drawled, trying for the ten bonus points. He thought maybe she would.

Arlene smiled down at him, her blue eyes glistening. "Yeah," she said. In the soft light of the table lamp she unbuttoned her ruffled blouse. opened it to him, the shadows spilling across her small perfect breasts. Then repeated the operation for him, coming to sit in his lap, her open palm stroking and pressing and petting Steve's thick chest hair. "Mmmm," she murmured musically, finishing the shirt.

"Oh, please Arlene. Make me love you." Could it be the first time he had spoken her name?

Normally Steve didn't like straight sucking so much as kissing and admiration. But when Arlene's small lipsticked mouth slid with feral intensity around his shaft, her tongue caressing him, he nearly came right there. This was the age-old problem of innovative sex-role adaptations and sexual satisfaction, Steve told himself sternly.

"Can I see yours?" he asked gently. He helped Arlene sit back on the sofa while he pulled the fancy cowboy boots from her small feet, her stiff jeans, a pair of pale yellow bikini skimps and then she was naked to him. He reached between her narrow thighs and crooked a finger into the groove, relishing the moistness there, the tangle of curled hair. "Just hold me, OK?" A few seconds later he was deep in her smell, the musk making him wildly hard, his lips beginning to make sense of her hidden opening, his finger finally spiraling inside. Arlene began to pant, her hips grinding her warm puss further and further into Steve's face.

Suddenly her slender legs blew wide, her knees locked straight, her toes wriggling to the far corners of the room. "Now!" she told him. Steve was already ready.

Later they shared a glass of wine that Arlene poured from a box in her refrigerator, Steve somehow ending up spilling a little bit of the shivery liquid across Arlene’s chin, chasing it down her neck, her mouth again.

"That was the best it's ever been for me...I saw stars...it's been so long." Arlene sighed dreamily in a refined tone, "I do appreciate the intellectual vigor of the student body!"

"Yeah," Steve flushed, not really understanding, but recognizing the phrase from somewhere. She seemed to have forgotten that he wasn't a student any more.

"I saw some stars too," he said, a little huffily. "Thanks for including me in your research. Will this go in the report? I think we deserved a footnote at least." Arlene just smiled at him until he had to smile back.

“Let me see, are these your folks?” he said, changing the subject and pointing at a framed photo that sat on top of one of the antiques, a picture of sailboats, an older couple smiling brightly with cocktails in their hands. “East coast, somehow.”

“Rhode Island,” Arlene Hale confirmed, “….Providence. My family’s lived there a long, long time.” She had put on Steve's blue work shirt, reclined enticingly on the couch with her long-stemmed wine glass, her knees still spread slightly, eyeing Steve's muscular body with obvious relish as he stood naked before her.

“My parents are from New York,” Steve volunteered. “I grew up there until I was six. Then we up and moved from Long Island to Montana. Never really got over the shock.”

“Really? That’s so funny. I thought you must have come out to go to school. I had no idea you were…”

“A local? Not really. I went to grade school and stuff here of course. My dad teaches up at MSU.”

“What?! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you. You say your father teaches here? That’s alarming.”

“Dave Skaar, yeah. Z&E, Zoology & Entomology.”

“Oh my Gawd! You’re Linda’s son, aren’t you? Oh my Gawd!” Arlene began to giggle hysterically, Steve growing increasingly unhappy at her continued amusement.

“You know her, I take it.”

“Oh MY GAWD! She's in my womens group!”

"Is there anything I can do to convince you not to talk about my mother?" Steve asked earnestly. "Like bury you in the back yard?"

Arlene's giggle became a knowing smirk as Steve's true identity infused her thoughts. Like suddenly she had found another secret sex stone to shine. "Kiss my tits, Steve Skaar," she ordered, raising her arms lazily above her head. "Make me turn red the next time I see your mom." Steve bent to kiss her nips, already blushing himself.

"I think I preferred being statistically anonymous," he observed, moistening her crinkled flesh between softened lips. Arlene moaned in agreement, whatever he'd said.

Could he make her beautiful breasts any more beautiful by touching them? Steve squeezed her sweet things softly, his open mouthed kisses turned to first one and then the other. Her legs widening, knees hugging him, her moist mantrap tugging the tip of his stiffened bone inside.

He began to pulse Arlene harder, drawn unwillingly into the older woman's fantasy, shaking his head as the lust accumulated, each deep stroke quivering with shame for sins he had never committed. What if Mom were to walk in right now? She'd see her baby turning into a crazy dirty animal all over her best girlfriend, just fucking fucking her. Arlene's eyes squeezed shut, her mouth compressing as she took on his guilty fury.

"Oh no, oh no! I'm so sorry, Linda, I didn't mean to! I didn't know! Oh, please no, don't stop," Arlene begged Steve, leaving no doubt that behind her closed eyes she also saw the outraged figure of Mom leaning over them.

Who was it that was pulling on his nuts? Steve went all the way in to her in the aching chaos of the second cum, his cock throbbing and plunging with draining pleasure.

After a while Arlene began to giggle again. He twined her hair in a gentle fist, kissed her lips again, growing worried by the complexity. How was it going to play out now that she knew his secret identity? Steve figured he already spent about 85% of his time living down his parents and his not so brilliant college career. But what if everybody already knew? Mom and Dad would have to find out sometime. Maybe that was the vision.

"I recommend you try not to look my mother in the eye for a couple of years. Maybe find a different womens group."

He lifted her slim hand to look at the heavy gold band he had noticed before. "Are you absolutely sure your husband isn't going to surprise us?" he probed. A couple of tricky situations had made Steve especially sensitive to the meaning of this symbol. Otherwise, why did they wear them?

"Don't worry about my husband. Harlan never comes here. I bought this house after we split up, two years ago."

"Oh really?" Suddenly the clues all came together for Steve. "Did you and your husband ever live on South Willson?" he asked suspiciously.

"Well, yes, why? Did we meet before? I know I would have remembered."

"'I especially appreciate the intellectual vigor of the student body,'" Steve mocked. "You're "A. Providence", from the Playboy Advisor, aren't you? I've been dreaming I would meet you since I was a kid."

It was Arlene's turn. Her face burned with embarrassed anger. "That damn letter! I begged Harlan over and over not to send it in."

She smiled ruefully, the thoughts hardening lines in her delicate face. "Now you know MY secret, just like everybody else. You can't imagine how much trouble that letter has caused me. Will you...still be able to like me?"

"Now that I know you pick up college kids? I already got that idea somewhere." Steve shrugged. "I guess I would have to be considered kinky myself for liking my mother's married faculty friends. The letter was real, then."

Arlene nodded, remembering. "Anything went, in those days. Everybody was swinging. Since Nixon it's all tightened up again. You can get in real trouble. We have to be very very careful."

"Anyway," she said, "I don't do it any more. She shook her head, dark wavy hair dancing around her pixie face. "Tonight was the first time in...a long time. That was all Harlan and his perversions."

"I have to tell you, being careful isn't my strongest suit," Steve said. Actually he seemed to have blown it quite a few times.

"We used to have these terrific parties, though," Arlene went on with a wistful smile. "A lot of the guys had never drunk a cocktail before, smoking a little weed with them would REALLY blow their minds. We had a lot of fun. I still get letters from a lot of them. A lot of them quite touching."

"I bet," Steve said. Arlene began to jounce his plums expertly in her warm hand, flicked a knowing finger beneath the serpent's chin. He groaned as his purpose was again revealed.

"I guess I've always wanted to know how other people feel," Arlene said. She was feeling up an impressive boner on him, veins moving in it as her open palm stroked it, spanked it, stirred it from side to side. "I think that's why I decided to become a scientist."

She had loved the role of succubus, cooing dreams into their ears in the dark. "It's OK, no one else can see. It makes me so happy when you make yourself feel good, please, can I help?" Inch by inch, person by person, she had refined these powers of assistance, her knowledge sure and true.

"That's perfect," Steve thought. "All they want to do is get into her, and she gets them drunk and jacks them off." He had to admit she had his number though. He lurched into a sitting position, his mouth open, nearly drooling, as Arlene's sweet tantric touches turned him up and turned him on.

"I like to think of myself as both a researcher AND an educator."

So, it had been the marriage that suffered, in the end, as the needs of profession and avocation increased. "Men can be so demanding," Arlene said with a sly smile. "Mmmm. You smell like me. Frankly, I don't think Harlan could keep up with us after a while. He started to get...abusive."

"You mean like hit you and stuff?"

Arlene paused, pondering the question Steve was sorry he'd asked. "He's just mean," she said finally, shaking her head as if to clear the memories. "Would you mind very much if I fucked you now?"

Steve didn't have the will to say no.

He wondered how her husband Harlan had responded to the dominant position thing. Steve had a hunch not well. Personally, he was feeling more and more positive about it. Arlene slid warm hands upward across Steve's chest, pressing her palms against his nipples as she turned and straddled him. Then she joined her hands behind his neck and nuzzled into Steve's tangled beard, her belly rubbing against his as she lifted her hips and took him in.

"Do you feel like I do?" Arlene whispered huskily, her tongue wet and delicious in his mouth. "Do you understand now?" Steve thought maybe he might, then realized with surprise how much he wanted to, finally, in a rush of brilliant color knew for certain that he did.

If it had ended there Steve might never have left town. But it didn't end there. They had moved into Arlene's bedroom and were giving her brass frame bed a good squeaking. Arlene's lipsticked mouth flattened against an oversize pillow, a lace-trimmed pillowcase smeared with red, her knees together, her soft tush raised. Steve snorted with lust as he slid into her sweet triple-hearted bottom, winnowed it to him.

When the pounding started, Steve momentarily attempted to adjust his rhythm before the woman beneath him withdrew and his mind returned. Arlene huddled behind the pillow, her mouth muffled by fabric, only her frightened eyes visible.

"And...Here's Harlan!" Steve said, eyebrows rising. Here we go again. "I thought you said your husband never came here?"

"He doesn't. It's not Harlan. It's Ben. Ben is... A guy. Another faculty member. Excuse me, I'll be right back." Arlene jumped from the bed and threw on a nightgown, slid quickly through the bedroom door. Left behind Steve sadly fingered his forlorn prick, still fat and sticky, then got up from the bed and put on his T-shirt. Where the hell were his pants? Through the door he could hear Arlene speaking rapidly, another deeper, whinier voice talking back. "Why not, sweetie? Don't you want me any more? I thought..."

Steve gave up and jerked the door open wearing only his T-shirt. It wasn't the first time he'd opened a door without knowing exactly what he'd find on the other side. Or the last. Steve stood staring in amazement at the small wiry man who stood in Arlene's foyer, dark-haired and balding, with a waxed moustache. It was that goddamn jewelry teacher, Ben Lozier. "What's going on, man?" Steve inquired. He wasn't sure the instructor would recognize him, having never taken a jewelry class his whole time at MSU, but the look of loathing that came his way told him otherwise.

"What's he doing here?" Lozier demanded of Arlene furiously. "Huh. Well, I guess once a slut always a slut. A stinkin hippie yet. Free Love, I get it." Ben Lozier looked like he wanted to jump Steve but was thinking better of the idea.

"I guess I resemble that remark," Steve said mildly. He smiled fiercely at the older man, glancing down briefly at his pants-less state. "'But 'Slut,' eh? I've never found that to be a very useful word. Why don't you give Arlene a ring later, think about apologizing."

"Shut up, you talentless moron! Listen, Arlene, I thought we had a deal. Fucking fucking students again. They'll throw both your asses out of MSU."

"Did I insult your faggy jewelry, buddy?" Steve gave the smaller man an angry push, by way of inviting him to leave. Ben Lozier bounced back against the wall of the entryway with a sudden explosion of breath. "Did we say anything about that string of coeds you've been pulling out of your classes for years?" Steve leaned forward, pressing his forearm across Lozier's chest for emphasis. "Some...Pretty...Nice...Girls. All they wanted was to learn how to make ear-rings and shit."

"I'm not. I don't. That's all over with," Lozier gasped.

"And I ain't no student no more neither." Steve urged the unwelcome visitor through the front door and swung it shut. "Well," he told Arlene, "That didn't go quite as well as it could have..."

Bleeker never showed up at the parking lot on Sunday night, must have decided to go home to the ranch at Big Timber, Steve figured. After a while he walked back to the house on Beale street, knocking softly on the door.

Arlene seemed sad. "I wish you didn't have to go. I don't care what anybody says. I love being with you." But Steve knew it couldn't be that way. Lozier would never let it rest. They shared another wistful embrace and then Arlene drove him the 80 miles to Butte.

"Know how to get back to the Interstate?" Steve asked. He leaned through the window of Arlene's VW for a final kiss. And then she did a wrenching 3-point turn and drove slowly off down the dirt road. He never saw her again.

He heard that she married a British guy, left the university, moved to England. Helpless and full of yearning memory, Steve read the Sociology journals for years hoping to find her report, "The relationship between traditional and innovative sex-role adaptations and innovative sex-role adaptations and sexual satisfaction among a homogeneous sample of middle-aged Caucasian women." But whatever her findings, they remained forever unpublished.

softcore

yellow, purple, pink

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I needed beer, cilantro, something I couldn't remember, romaine lettuce. The store is just a hundred yards away. It's already dark at 6 pm, I walk past a police car parked in the police zone. That's strange. There's an ambulance when I turn the corner red and yellow lights alternating lazily outside the front door of the grocery.

There was a silver sedan parked in the handicapped zone just past the mailbox, an elderly couple starting to get into it. But like me, they were rubbernecking, suddenly in front of my eyes the woman stubs her toe on the blue parking bumper and crashes to the ground. Why do they make those things? Their only real function is to break your leg or remove your oil pan.

It seems like slow motion, I can track her thin body swiveling in the air as she lurches forward, her shoulders rounding slightly in anticipation of the impact but her arms still at her sides. Her feet flail in the air as her head disappears beneath the curb in front of me. With rare presence of mind I leap forward to help.

"I think she's OK," I tell her husband, who has come around the back. "She fell on her body, I don't think she hit her head." We get our arms beneath her, raise her to her feet, ease her into the car. She seems alert, looking at me and answering my questions. "How does your hip feel?"

"Thank you, oh thank you," she's saying. Her husband more soberly saying "I've got to get her to a hospital."

Somewhat prematurely I disengage and go into the store, hearts of romaine, cilantro, what was that other thing? I'm pushing a bundle of wet cilantro into a produce bag when I feel something sticky on my bare wrist and look down to find my hand covered with blood. Dashing back outside just as the man turns on the lights to drive away.

Peering into the car it's obvious. This lady is wearing a white nylon jacket, and it's quickly becoming soaked with red. Enough half-actions. "We better get those guys over here," I tell the husband, and getting no argument, turn and run to the fire engine that's just pulled up behind the ambulance. "Nothing to do with that," I blurt out, "There's a lady over hear that just took a fall, bleeding, needs your help!"

I guess we were lucky that that ambulance was there, though it was what started it all. I left with the paramedics performing their mercies. Tortillas. That was the other thing I had to buy. Hope she's all right.

Do spiders eat chicken?

We were sitting in the front room eating an 8-piece Kentucky Fried. I left to get a beer, and when I returned was dismayed to see that my pal Joey had disgorged a huge pile of biscuits and slime in the middle of the rug. Personally, I usually try to make it to the bathroom, but dogs are not as refined as apes.

I can deal with dog vomit with aplomb, and I have the technology. Still, the resemblance of this incident to the recent SF Bay oil spill should be noted, with wads of absorbent material required, a few environmental hazards left behind, a kidney-shaped blotch moistening the carpet.

Lest we remain unaware of the complexities of our bioverse, I left to get another beer, my fourth, and returned to stand momentarily in front of my chair, we were watching Andy Griffith in "A Face in the Crowd." It's a dramatic movie, I was deep into the TV screen, suddenly startled by the leg waving silhouette of a spider descending on a strand past the bridge of my nose. How novel! But business was being done, this pale arachnid was after the puke. Descending like Neil Armstrong, conducting a moonwalk to obtain a boulder of whitemeat, blasting back into silk-string orbit. I watched this repeated three times.

The landline rang in the back room of the 'TooZoo and Jack answered it. A lady with a nice voice asked if he was the owner.

"Jack Dextra, that's right. You can call me Jack, or Dextra, whichever you like."

"Jack Dextra, you WILL NOT give my daughter a TATTOO!" the formerly nice voice suddenly shouted in his ear. Jack jerked the phone away and let it drop to the floor, the plastic receiver twitching as the old-fashioned twisty-cord unwound. You got used to these calls after a while. Well, either he would, or he wouldn't, or maybe he could cut them a deal on the removal later. Sighing, he retrieved the instrument.

"Sorry," he said. "Dropped something. What's your daughter's name?"

"Vanity Aaron," the voice said. Fuck. It was her. The Bird of Paradise.

"Doesn't ring a bell," Jack lied. "If she comes in, I'll tell her she needs to get counseling. Okay? Sure, I can call you too, Mrs. Aaron."

Jack hung up the phone and massaged his aching neck. The body of a snarling puma danced on his forearm.

It was a beautiful summer day in Berkeley but you never saw much of it back here in the dim, spotlit recesses of the skin-arts studio. Jack checked his schedule again and stepped squinting out into the storefront, nodding bashfully at Evelyn, the counterperson, a black haired lesbian in a tank top, her pale bare shoulders adorned with orange flame. "Wish I'd done that," he mused out loud, for the hundredth time. Evelyn grinned back at him, secure in her sexual preference.

"Remember the girl with the Bird of Paradise?"

"Huh-uh. The flower? Or the avian species?"

"The bird," Jack sighed, "I'm going to take a smoke break. Want to come?" He had a fat one already rolled up in his car.

Evelyn considered, nibbling at the stainless-steel ring that ran through the corner of her lower lip. "You have a walk-in." Her purple-shaded eyes shifted to the left.

It was an older guy, sitting alone in one of the plastic chairs, leafing through a tattoo mag, looking at the tats on the tits. Another parent? Jack winced. "Can I help you, sir?"

"I was thinking of getting a tattoo?" Well, no shit.

"Would you like to have a look at our design collection? We have some really good fantasy scenes, a great selection of totem creatures, abstract tribal designs."

Most walk-ins either had some idea of what they wanted or else they didn't and this guy was no exception. "Hmm," he said, brushing his thin brown hair back. "Hmm, no, I don't think so."

Nah. No, what he really wanted was to have his wife's name put on. Jack gave him the lecture, thinking about the telephone call, thinking about the possibility that it was a setup, an Alameda county health guy or Channel 5.

"Frankly, sir, I think you should know, names are usually not a good idea. People change, and people change people. I mean, even at your age. Can I ask? Is it a relationship thing? Is that what's going on here?" Jack had done it himself, Alexandra's name in script woven invisibly, yet indelibly into the bamboo forest through which his puma strode.

"Okay," he said, "Let me introduce you to Evelyn here. Don't worry, she doesn't bite--much. She'll get your info and the medical stuff. I'll be back in a few minutes and we'll get started."



It turned out that the name was Steve Oskman, sort of an unusual moniker. "You don't have a daughter, do you?" Jack asked, making conversation.

tattooed on his hairy back. Candice. How do you spell that, with an a or an i? Fuckhead doesn't know for sure. "You know, spelling in important in this business," Jack jokes. "Frankly, names are usually a bad idea. People change, and people change people. In Black Letter, cause he thinks it gives more gravitas. "I need to warn you that the more surface area the more discomfort, the more blood." So it isn't just the dumb kids getting stupid tattoos. Ends up with "CNADY" on his shoulderblade.

Silver hair on his back. "Jesus, man!" Jack joked, "I should charge you extra for a barber fee."

"Actually, you know," Jack said, slapping a swath of shaving cream across the guy's shoulderblades, "a lot of the old tattooists were barbers..."

Dev Notes (see also the Revision History):

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What's the plot, then? Presumably he has already done the tattoo or still goes ahead, probably the latter. What's the danger/conflict?

Need some more tactile detail. Smell of alcohol. What's the theme? Events are indelible. Mistakes can be made.

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What's your sign?

Story about a guy that got into tattooing early, ended up decorating more than 800 women. Maybe roll in some of the massuse story.
"I was thinking about getting a tattoo?"

Later I had Jeannie to work out in the parlor, but in those early days it was all on personal charm, which I don't have none of, but if you want to eat, you better get it.
This chick came into the A1 Tattoo and stood there uncertainly. Lot of empty real-estate. I put down the Chronicle, gave her my best smile.

"Where do you want it?"

"Where do you think?"

"A lot of guys think the lower back location is kind of sexy. How about across here? I drew the alchohol pad across the girl's sacrum and she giggled as the cool evaporation tickled.
What do I have? Thanks for asking.

Everyone remembers their first time. For me it involved the lead of a No. 2 pencil that became lodged beneath the skin of Jane Hokinson's forearm. She forgave me, eventually, but for several weeks it was touch and go whether I would go on to become a premier tat guy or end up plying my future trade in the dark corners of juvenile hall.

Of course I do guys too, but from the very beginning I was most interested in making my mark with the girls.

Third person?

What might happen? Present tense, so the couple just comes in. She wants her boyfriend’s name, he suggests otherwise. “I could put my name here in reverse lettering so that you can remember me everytime you look in the mirror.”

Not present tense, past, but not looking backward.

What her mom said about it.

Dexter? a good name. A first pp in a fantasy land, full of vines, weapons, weirdling images. Maybe I'll call him "Jack Dextra"