Loading...There is a framed, color photograph resting on one of the built-in shelves in the living room of my 5th floor apartment. Everyone who visits me here in downtown Baltimore pauses to pick it up and look.
There are nine bare-chested guys in the photo, all in their late teens or early 20s, standing beside each other, outstretched arms over arms, on a bright sunny beach, their backs to the Atlantic surf. They are all thick, hard-muscled and deeply tanned. And all wearing identical fire-engine red swim trunks with the words “Kill Devil Hills Lifeguard Service” emblazoned on the right leg.
There’s a tenth guy on the very end, one who doesn’t fit in. It’s the same lifeguard trunks, but he’s thin, lanky with unkempt hair and leftover boyhood freckles. Physically, he’s not quite grown yet. Not filled out. Even in the still-photo, you can see an awkwardness. That boy would be me.
Don’t misunderstand, I was a good lifeguard. I can still swim with the best of them, and that summer — five years ago — I pulled two people from killer rip currents and plucked a half dozen frantically struggling kids out of the water after they had disappeared below the surface, unnoticed by distracted parents.
It’s just that I didn’t fit the part. And though the photo is embarrassing even still to look at, I obsessively pick it up and wonder if the image of that gawky teenage boy is what Mrs. Adderson saw that summer.
* * *
“Hello. Are you the one I see about renting a chair and an umbrella for the day?”
Those were her first words to me. I looked down at her from atop the 14-foot wooden lifeguard stand where I sat facing the ocean, in a chair with my binoculars, towel, two-way radio, suntan lotion and a rescue float at hand.
She was correct. I was the one to see. All of the lifeguards in the towns on the Outer Banks islands off the east coast oversee the heavy wooden chairs and cumbersome umbrellas that people rent.
So I climbed down and, after handing me $15 for the day, she headed to the end set of chairs to my left.
She was middle-aged, brunette and alone. That’s about all that stuck with me. After all, it was still early morning, and in another hour the crowds would start trekking down from The Viking Hotel, the 15-story high-rise behind me, and with them would be dozens of frisky teenage girls to flirt with, most of them wearing barely-there bikinis. They had such beautiful asses, and a few were beginning to suntan topless. Some of them would spend evenings cruising the beach bars, honing in on lifeguards especially. Surely, at some point I would get lucky.
I’m laughing at my words. Unlike the other lifeguards that summer, I had a poor track record with girls on the beach. Jennifer had taken a liking to me, but was just 17 and on a short leash from her parents. Their week at the beach ended with nothing more than a goodbye wave from her.
In truth, I’d only had sex with two girls, both back at Syracuse during that freshman year. One girl, wobbly-legged drunk, pulled me onto her bed in her dorm. The other, devastated by a bad breakup, turned to me for solace one Saturday night. I doubt either remember my name. Is it enough to say that each experience took only a few moments at the most? All I ever really wanted was to finish school, get a good job and find a nice, normal girl to settle down with and have lots of sex. I mean lots. In the meantime, I would pursue the girls on the beach.
All those aspirations began to change later that morning when, sitting on the lifeguard tower, I looked to my left and saw the middle-aged woman walking slowly from her chair to the water’s edge, a hundred feet away from her. For me, it was just curiosity at first. She was tall, delicately slender, had endless legs and wore a basic black, modest one-piece, offset by alabaster skin. She did not belong in the sun, even at this morning hour.
As she splashed her feet around at the water’s edge, I picked up my binoculars for a closer look, noticing her hair, light brown with streaks of gray, a wrinkle or two on her face, a few age spots around. I guessed maybe she was in her early 50s. Nonetheless, I kept watching her close up, invading her privacy, a completely voyeuristic act on my part.
She turned toward me, bent over to pick a small shell out of the water and one of the straps slipped from her shoulder, part of the suit falling with it, bringing much of her left breast into view. I even caught a glimpse of her brown nipple. Calmly, she pulled the strap back up, stood up and looked directly at me looking at her — with my binoculars, no less. I was caught, and embarrassed. And she knew it.
It was the walk back to her chair that did it for me. I could see now that she was attractive, though not beautiful, and looked her age. But her walk was slow, at a measured pace, confident. This was a woman comfortable in her own skin, totally in charge of herself, and not unnerved that I was spying on her. I figured an accountant, or an attorney, maybe a CEO. I could just sense that she was smarter than the rest of us, and with every movement she became more and more attractive. For some reason, I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I was captivated.
Part of my problem with girls, aside from my dorky looks, was a basic shyness. Which makes it all the more remarkable, even now, to realize that I promptly climbed down from my lifeguard stand and walked as nonchalantly as possible over to her.
“These rays are murderous on fair skin, ma’am. You have enough sunscreen?”
“Thank-you, yes.” she said from her chair, without even a smile. “But I’ll keep putting on more, especially since I can’t seem to keep my suit from falling off of me.” She was looking dead-on into my eyes. She wasn’t laughing.
Now my awkwardness and paralyzing shyness began catching up to me. About ready to retreat, I thankfully noticed the paperback she was holding: It was a copy of “Henry and June.”
Finally, all those years of reading alone and frustrated in my bedroom just might pay off. You see, I had read “Henry and June,” when all the other guys were playing soccer or, more likely, taking the panties off girls in the back seats of their cars. I knew the likes of Anais Nin, a now largely forgotten writer from the 1930s and ’40s who consistently wrote not just about sex, but hot, hot sex. “White heat” she called it.
“You like Anais Nin?” I asked, incredulously, as if only perverts like myself would be caught reading her, especially in public.
“You’re familiar with her, then?” she replied.
I told her I spent a lot of time reading Nin, including the endless personal journals about her numerous affairs, one of which was published as “Henry and June.”
So where are you in the book? I asked, simply because I could think of nothing else quickly enough.
She looked down to the page and began reading aloud:
“Beautiful women and handsome men arouse fierce desires in me. I want to dance. I want to know perverse people, to be intimate with them. I never look at naive faces. I want to bite into life, and to be torn by it.”
“And, of course,” I responded, “You know this is the same woman who also once said, ‘I have no brakes on.’ ”
And with that, Mrs. Anna Adderson smiled at me, an actual smile, mind you. She extended her hand and introduced herself. “I am Henry,” I responded, asking how long she would be at the beach and if she was staying at The Viking.
“I’m here for the week, but I’ve rented the little cottage beside the hotel,” she said, turning around and pointing to a small, older house with a screened-in back deck, much like hundreds of other 1950’s-style cottages that still lined the beach, between the big hotels.
As she turned around in her chair to point it out, I began to notice that her modest black swimsuit — made of nylon, I guess — was abnormally thin, some kind of designer suit, I suppose, which clinged to her every curve, affording me a perfect outline of her breasts with her nipples pushing through the fabric. I could even see impressions from her puffy areolas. Her breasts were small, but absolutely perfect for her figure. And the suit showed the flawless curve of her hips.
As she turned, her legs parted, the slit of her pussy clearly outlined and the slightly swollen lips pushing out against the wet fabric. I can still today taste the fierce desire it aroused in me. You may ask yourself if you can taste desire. I could, at least on that day. I knew then I wanted her. I was all of 18 years old.
And so we became beach friends, sort of. She rented the chair for the rest of the week and said hello each morning. Once or twice during the day, I would invent some reason to chat her up for a few minutes, mostly about the beach. I’d point out the sandpipers and skimmers. She, in turn, would walk over to my lifeguard tower where we would somehow get onto some odd topics: South American travel, noir films, little-known authors, and champagne, which was her favorite drink. And she liked to talk about Anais Nin. That was good. I could keep up. Even her voice aroused me — low and soft, choosing her words as carefully as she seemed to choose each footstep she took. I hung onto every word, every syllable, she spoke.
The younger women and teenage girls on the beach began to fade from my thoughts, even the two gorgeous young blondes sunbathing topless each day just a few yards in front of my tower. They looked nothing alike, but I dubbed them the “twins” because each had breasts exactly like the other. Even their nipples matched. How odd. It didn’t matter. My erections, which seemed to occur incessantly in the hottest part of the day, were for Mrs. Adderson now.
Just before lunchtime Wednesday, after climbing down from the tower, the “twins” came up and, standing no more than two feet in front of me, proceeded to ask which were the hottest bars after sundown, the ones they should head to. I knew they were playing with me, standing so close. They had no interest in me, just wanted to tease me, fluster me as their tits lightly swung from side to side while walking toward me. I played the ever-professional lifeguard who’s used to seeing half-naked women. I refused to let them catch me glancing at their tits — though they were indeed fabulous.
“Perks of the job, I guess?” asked Mrs. Adderson as she walked up just as the “twins” headed back to the hotel, now bored with me.
“They were just looking for information,” I said.
“I think they were hitting on you, Henry,” she said, with a slight smile.
“No, I’m definitely not their type.”
“But are they your type?” she came back.
“Maybe once, not now.”
“And what are you looking for now?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Maybe something different?” she asked.
“You and I seem to have the oddest conversations, Mrs. Adderson. Why is that?” I asked.
“Kindred spirits, maybe,” she said as she walked away.
Could I ask her out? She was 50, maybe older. She was sophisticated, graceful, possibly rich, and the first woman I’d ever talked to who — in my mind at least — was truly “seductive.” I now knew what the word really meant. But I had no illusions about my own awkwardness, immaturity and goofy looks. And what if she rejected me, laughed at me for even asking? There would be no way to face her again. I was frozen, too terrified to act.
Maybe it was providence that stepped in. On Thursday, as her week’s vacation drew near its end, I was on my tower in the late morning with my eye on a girl — she looked to be about 10 — who was out too deep in the water, no parents around. Sure enough, she went under, came up, screamed and sank again. I bolted off the tower, gave three quick whistle blasts to let the lifeguards on my flank know there was trouble, and raced into the waves, with them running down the beach to catch up.
My eyes were glued to the spot where she had disappeared. When I reached it, I dove under, couldn’t find her, dove again and finally felt a hand touch my outstretched arm. A stroke of luck. I brought her to the surface, pulled her ashore and carried her to my tower, helped by the other lifeguards. A crowd formed, the rescue squad arrived, but the girl was okay, though a bit terrified until her mom showed up.
The rest of the day was busy but uneventful. Mrs. Adderson didn’t talk to me. She lounged in her chair under her umbrella, other than to take a dip in the water every hour or so, with me again watching through binoculars and her knowing exactly what I was doing. I think it was beginning to amuse her.
As usual, by 4:30 the beach was about empty, everyone now back at their rooms to take showers and be ready to hit the bars and restaurants after sunset. Mrs. Adderson had left too. After I packed away the chairs and umbrellas, I walked down to the water’s edge — I did this at the end of every day — just to watch the surf and to feel the breeze on my face, without having to keep my eye on swimmers. Fishing boats this time of day were often chugging their way back to the docks at Wanchese, not too far south of our beach.
As I stood, arms folded on my chest, I felt the heat of a human body standing beside me, just inches from my arm. It was Mrs. Adderson. She smiled, said nothing, and joined me in just watching the tide start to come in, a little closer with each foamy wave. Our feet began to get wet.
“You’ve had quite a day,” she said finally, above the roar of the incoming waves.
“Thursdays are always busy, thousands of people on the beach,” I answered.
“No. I mean saving that little girl. I saw you moving faster than I’ve seen anyone run. That was amazing. She owes her life to you.”
I shrugged, sort of like quarterbacks used to do when asked about the game-winning pass they just threw to beat Notre Dame. An “it-was-nothing” attitude in my gesture, but I said nothing more.
“I thought you deserved something, so I got you this,” she said, handing me a bottle of true French champagne. She reminded me that it was her drink of choice. This, I guess, was my reward. I was both flattered and embarrassed.
“Take it and drink it all in a single night of revelry with some girlfriend,” she said.
“I don’t have a girlfriend.”
Then silence, only the noise of the waves and the east wind brushing past our faces as I read the bottle’s label. I hated these awkward, quiet moments with her that so often followed my comments.
“Would you consider drinking it with me?” I asked.
* * *
“Tell me something about yourself, that no one knows,” she said.
We were sitting on her screened-in deck facing the ocean. A small round table was between us with the now-opened champagne bottle being passed back and forth. We were on our third glass. Actually, we were drinking out of clear plastic cups.
She was asking nothing less than for me to open my soul, to reach down for my most guarded list of secrets withheld from everyone. What did she want me to do, tell her that I masturbate in the shower? Who was this woman? I wasn’t clever enough for a quick retort.
“Too hard, huh,” she replied, not looking at me, instead gazing out at the ocean, her right foot raised up, resting on the arm of the empty, third chair at our table. That put her exquisite long leg, and especially her ivory thigh, above the table top. There’s something about a woman’s thighs, especially when her legs are open, that just does it for me.
I wish I could say I was bone-hard and ready to rip off her swimsuit. Instead, I felt a weakness in my gut, and was shivering from nervousness. Seriously.
“Ok, then tell me about some fantasy you’ve had,” she said.
“You really like to get to the heart of things, don’t you,” I managed somehow.
“Would you rather me ask about your family or the weather?” she questioned. “Do you own a dog? We could talk about your dog.” Her right eyebrow arched as she said it. I got the sarcasm.
After a long pause from me: “Ok, fair enough. I don’t know if this counts, but in high school I fantasized all the time about girls out of my reach — cheerleaders and beauty queens. Like those two topless girls on the beach. But dating them was about as realistic as my walking on the moon.”
“So you never even asked the cheerleaders or beauty queens out?
“No. Never,” I said, laughing at myself and my humiliating lack of self-confidence in high school. The stories I could tell.
“Anyone else you fantasized about?”
“You don’t let up, do you,” I said. “Just remember, you asked. I’ve never told anyone this, and I don’t know why I’m telling you, but I dwell a lot on my stepsister.”
“Aa-haa. Now we’re getting somewhere,” she said. We both laughed.
“This is so twisted. She’s two years older than me. But she was the first real ‘woman’ that I paid attention to. After high school she went to a local junior college and still lived at home. And out of the blue, just a few months before I left for Syracuse she began walking around the house in her underwear. And she would surreptitiously crawl in my bed at the first hint of a thunderstorm and lie on top of me.”
“But worse, I’d be brushing my teeth and she’d come in the bathroom in her pajamas, strip them down and sit on the toilet, peeing right in front of me. She wouldn’t even close her legs. She would ask if I thought she should get a landing strip. Or would I help trim her pubic hair. Everything was to embarrass me. To jerk my chain. Mostly, it made me obsess over her.”
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “Nothing ever happened. And I do love her as my sister. I guess she’s always been my best friend. Still, it’s creepy.”
“It’s not creepy,” Mrs. Adderson said. “So, did you give her that landing strip?
She looked at my face. “Never mind. I have my answer.”
“It was just a pervy lark, I guess. Nothing else happened.”
“Maybe like Anais Nin, you’re tempted by what she called unknown pleasures,” Mrs. Adderson said.
“What about you,” I asked, emboldened by the champagne as we finished off the bottle. “Who do you fantasize about?”
“I don’t really fantasize so much about specific people, more about situations,” she answered.
“Such as?”
“Mmmmmm. Like having sex on an overnight flight to Europe.”
“Go ahead,” I said as casually as I could speak the words, though I was in complete disbelief that she was actually going to talk about this. I was too flustered to look at her. So there we were, both of us beginning to talk intimately, and now each of us was staring out at the waves, not looking at each other.
“Well, in my fantasy, my partner and I are sitting side by side along an aisle, and ask a flight attendant for a blanket as the lights are turned down low since it’s nightime over the ocean.”
Mrs. Adderson goes on but puts her leg down and turns toward me now. peering directly into my eyes.
“We raise the chair’s arm between us and then spoon, him in back of me. We’re covered by the blanket, you see. He rearranges our clothes to gain access to me, but we have to be very quiet since the other passengers have settled down, many of them sleeping or watching a movie. And then just as things get interesting between us, just as we start, shall I say the ‘connection’ between us, the plane hits turbulence. Not much, but just enough to get that roller-coaster movement as the plane lifts and falls. It makes sex almost impossible to do but breath-takingly exciting. What’s even more exciting is that we can’t make any noise or we’ll be discovered.”
“And who’s your partner? Mr. Adderson?”
“It’s really not important who he is. Sometimes an imaginary boyfriend, other times a stranger I happen to sit down beside. . . . Do you like this fantasy of mine?”
“Very much. Keep going,” I said, somehow getting the words out. “Did you say a stranger?”
This, the most erotic conversation I’ve ever had with anyone, is now interrupted by her cellphone ringing. She answers, gives me a look and I know it’s time to go. As I’m heading down her steps into the sand, I stop and ask: “Have you ever really done something like that?”
She covers the phone with her hand and says, “Thanks for letting me share the champagne with you, Henry.”
I knew she wouldn’t answer.
* * *
Friday. Mrs. Adderson’s last full day on the beach. The week’s vacationers have to check out at 11 a.m. on Saturday, so most have to spend all Saturday morning packing and cleaning up their condos with no time to hit the beach. Friday’s the last fun day up and down the coast.
I had decided that after my lunch break, I would stop by her beach chair and ask her to dinner for that evening. I wanted to keep talking to her. I needed that connection with her. As perverted as it may seem, I wasn’t so much thinking about having sex with her as I was just talking about sex. But when I returned from a quick bite at a raw bar down the block, her chair was empty. At 4:30, still no Mrs. Adderson. I knocked on her cottage door with no luck.
That night I was dejected, lost. I had waited too late. Who knows where she was or who she was with.
I hung out at The Viking’s lounge, restless and edgy, drinking beer and, every hour, walking across the sand to her beach house, hoping she’d be there. Hoping we could continue our conversation. She wasn’t there. The place was dark. It was getting late.
By 11 p.m., I walked out to the hotel’s large patio, overlooking the ocean, and sat at one of the 20 or so tables, the only person out there that late. I stared at the dark waves, aimlessly.
How could I be utterly devastated over a woman as old as my mother, someone I had known only a few days? But I was. And at the moment, I didn’t care much about college, getting laid by girls on the beach, or working toward some future I had set out for me. I was obsessed. Her walk, that quiet confidence, her body, and that surreal conversation on her deck. A desolateness invaded me. I was a mess.
After sitting a half hour in the darkness, her hand caressed my shoulder from behind, accompanied by that now familiar voice.
“Hello, Henry,” she said rather quietly. “What keeps you out here so late — and so alone?”
Instantaneously, I shifted from utter despair to high anxiety, my heart racing. I had no answer for her, but offered her a chair.
The black swimsuit had been replaced with a white cotton beach dress. It was strapless, hugging her snugly down to her waist, then flowing freely to just above her knees. She was barefoot. She had now morphed into a goddess.
“You look so forlorn. Whatever is wrong?”
For me, the moment had come. I had nothing left to lose. So I said, “I don’t at all understand it, Mrs. Adderson, but I feel connected to you somehow. I’m embarrassed and it’s silly. I mean I’ve known you for only a few days. And to you, I know I’m just a kid. But I don’t want you to leave tomorrow.”
“The age difference doesn’t matter, Henry. I see us as fellow travelers, you and me. I believe we’re on similar paths. You may not understand it yet. but I’m glad you see the connection between us.”
I said nothing but wondered what she meant. We both were quiet awhile, our eyes cast out over the ocean, just luxuriating in the breeze at our faces. I hadn’t the faintest clue of what else to say, or do.
Without speaking, she took hold of my hand and led me onto the beach and to her house. She turned on no lights, instead leaving the doors and windows wide open, the moonlight illuminating us and the room in a misty sheen of black and white. A steady, salty breeze flowed through the windows. I had no idea what to expect, but I was terrified.
She led me to a chair in the living room, then brought in a glass of red wine, just one, for us to share. Still in silence, Mrs. Adderson did an amazing thing. She straddled my legs, facing me, and sat down, her soft hips on my knees. We exchanged sips of wine before she put the glass down on a table beside us. She ran her fingers through my hair slowly, almost lovingly. She stroked my face. I could hardly breathe.
She cocked her head to one side, slightly, as if trying to figure me out. Then locked in on my eyes and spoke for the first time in 10 minutes. She said these words that I will never forget. Who could?
“Henry, would you like to see my pussy?”
It was matter-of-fact, no emotion. As if she had asked if I wanted another drink of wine.
I couldn’t respond. I don’t believe my mind comprehended what she was saying.
Not bothering for an answer, she reached down, took the hem of her sun dress, and slowly pulled it up to her waist, exposing her sex to me. She had on no panties. In the moon-illuminated room I could make out her ivory white thighs and a small, soft-looking bit of pubic hair. Not much, but enough to be magical. She kept looking at me, as I kept looking at “it,” staring, really, in disbelief.
She leaned forward, very lightly brushing my lips with hers, for only a second. She whispered in my ear: “Touch me.”
She guided my hand down and between ler legs. With one finger, I reached for the slit between her vagina’s lips. I was trembling. Her moisture drenched my finger in a silkiness as I began sliding it ever so gently back and forth over her small opening. She was already practically dripping on the floor. I slid my finger inside and out, repeating that again and again, all the while her gaze still locked on my eyes. She began rocking her hips slowly back and forth.
With my finger still inside her, my thumb found her clit. She moved her arms behind her, grabbing my knees and arching her back, pushing her pussy closer to me. By now, my hand was cramping, but I was never going to stop, not unless she made me.
I could now begin to smell her sex. Though her pussy seemed small, it had a wonderful smell of the ocean at night — clean and pure and the slight scent of sea air. I swear it was really her and not the beach I was smelling. And it all mixed in with some kind of exotic perfume on her neck.
She began breathing deeply, rapidly, rocking her body back and forth as I moved my fingers in and out. We were in a rhythm that began moving faster and faster, then faster still. And harder. She grabbed my hand, pulled my fingers out and crushed the palm of my hand hard against her mound, holding it there as she pushed her clit against me with all her might. Then froze still, as an orgasm swept across her in waves, one after another, then another — I could feel them, sense each wave, like feeling her pulse — until she was done.
She pulled down her dress and brought me a towel for my hand.
“Henry. Do you remember reading what Anais Nin’s cousin once said to her: Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.”
I nodded, but not really getting her point.
“Do you have your car with you?” she asked.
“I don’t have a car, just my motorcycle”
“Is it in the hotel parking lot?”
I nodded. “Then it will do,” she said. “Come. Let’s go.”
* * *
We sped south out of town, past the hotels and restaurants, until there were no more street lights, just beaches and seaside homes. Mrs. Adderson sat behind me, arms around my waist as we rode along the two-lane blacktop in the dark. I swear I could feel the heat and wetness between her legs as she pressed up against my hips. We found the home she wanted and an attractive mid-30s woman let us in. I had no idea what we were up to.
The woman led us upstairs to a bedroom where another woman, an absolutely beautiful redhead, and a man were waiting. All three were wearing shorts and T-s, typical beach wear for nearly everyone on the islands. They seemed so normal as they turned off the overhead, leaving only two lamps by the bed still on. There was no talking.
Mrs. Adderson motioned me to sit in a stuffed chair, she sat on the arm. She looked at me with index finger to her lips, a warning not to talk. The three began undressing. We watched.
The redhead, now naked, lay on the bed, less than five feet in front of us. She was slender, with deep red hair and shaved pubic area, her pale skin just flawless. The other woman, more voluptuous with large breasts swinging back and forth, had black hair and was unshaved. The man was well built, with a hard erection already. All were probably in their 30s. I had no clue who they were.
The brunette and the man began stroking, caressing the beautiful redhead, both sitting cross-legged on the bed, one on each side of her. Mrs. Adderson scooted down into my lap, with one arm around my neck, her legs draped over the other arm of the stuffed chair, her face close enough to me that I could smell her skin and that strange perfume that hinted of some far-off paradise. She paid scant attention to me. She was fixated on them, completely mesmerized.
The three began making love, the brunette and the man each kissing, pinching, then sucking the redhead’s nipples in an obvious mix of pain and pleasure, she on her right breast, he on her left. Her nipples became bright red and extended. She was sighing deeply, then moaning almost as soon as they moved down to between her legs. They each took turns licking her pussy, which was now opened, pink and glistening. From our chair we could smell the sex in the air.
The brunette was now on her knees on the bed, her beautiful ass up in the air toward us, affording us unmistakably raw views of each woman’s pussy.
“Which do you think has the prettier sex?” Mrs. Adderson whispered in my ear.
I’m not sure why I chose the redhead, but Mrs. Adderson agreed. “Beautiful, so beautiful,” she whispered. “God, she’s got a cunt to fucking die for.” Since it already was a night of unimaginable surprises, I shouldn’t have been taken aback by her language, but I was.
Mrs. Adderson’s eyes never left the three as the brunette began alternately licking the redhead’s clitoris, then turning to suck the man’s cock. I wondered if the guy was married to one of them.
Mrs. Adderson reached for the top of her sun dress and slowly pulled it down to her waist, completely freeing her breasts. They were delicate and soft, but with those large brown nipples and areolas I had seen through her swimsuit. She began gently and slowly brushing them with her fingers as she watched the man mount the redhead, letting the brunette reach behind him and hold his balls as he moved his dick in and out.
It became a three-way orgy, hard to keep up with who was doing what to whom. If truth be known, I wasn’t much interested as I witnessed my first threesome. After all, I was sitting with Mrs. Adderson in my lap, bare-breasted and watching her caress her own nipples.
“Henry,” Mrs. Adderson whispered. “Pinch my nipples and pull on them.” I did what I was told, but was reprimanded. “Gently, very gently,” she said. Then later, “harder, much harder, pull.” I pulled them outward until she winced, then she licked her lips and smiled to no one in particular.
Moments, no maybe a half hour, later — I couldn’t keep track of time — the orgy ended as the man spurted his semen into the mouths of both women as they huddled their faces together in front of him. By my count, it must have been his third orgasm. And then it was over.
Mrs. Adderson pulled up the top of her dress and walked me to the door. The brunette grabbed a robe and led us downstairs. As she opened the door, Mrs. Adderson pulled a white envelope out of a pocket somewhere on her dress, handing it to the woman. I didn’t want to venture a guess about its contents. We left and rode back into town. I somehow knew it best to ask no questions.
* * *
“Do you think I’m mad, Henry?”
She said this as we were once again back in her dark cottage, again with the night breeze flowing through the wide-open windows and doors, but now becoming stronger and louder.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t care. You make me forget about all other women, Mrs. Adderson.”
“You’re such a beautiful, beautiful boy,” she said, just before lifting my T-shirt over my head, then undoing my shorts and helping me to step out of them. Then my boxers. She stood, her breasts against my chest, looking at my face — and I think into my soul — while one of her hands reached down to gently feel my dick, which mercifully was starting to get engorged and hard. The feeling of her soft hand on me is one I relive every day.
“Such a beautiful, beautiful boy,” she said again, still standing and looking at me, as she massaged my balls.
Somehow I wound up on my back in her bed. She sat cross-legged and naked beside me with a bottle of scented oil that she began smoothing over my skin, starting with my face. It smelled like mangos.
“Do you like me naked?” she asked, as she moved down to my thighs, rubbing oil in, getting my body glisteningly slippery.
I could only nod a yes.
As she was massaging me, partly to keep from coming too quickly, I asked why she was so interested in Anais Nin? She continued caressing me.
“You have to marvel at her fierce desires, Henry. Such an appetite for lust. Didn’t you love how she just swam in passion, devoured lovers. Took joy in masturbating all the time and luxuriously, and without remorse. Relished the unknown pleasures. She harbored this insatiable desire for the white, white heat — this hunger.”
She smoothed the oil back up my legs and to my dick, then my balls, caressing them gently but unceasingly, while I fought hard to not come all over her.
She leaned down, close to my face. And in a half-whisper said:
“You see, Henry, I have this hunger too.”
“I’m drunk with lust, young man. Don’t make love to me, Henry. Right now I need to be fucked. Ravaged. Vulgarized. For the here and now, I am yours to do with what you want. But do it now.”
Already exhausted and feeling sensory overload from the night, I nonetheless desperately wanted her. I pulled her to me and began kissing her feverishly, our tongues pushing deep into our mouths, searching and searching. I never much liked kissing before. But now, we could hardly stop, taking only quick breaths, wanting to kiss forever, our mouths becoming sore.
I pulled back, rolled on top and began kissing her neck and shoulders, then nipping them and finally biting into her, leaving marks. She began clawing my arms and back.
I did the same to her breasts, loving the thickness of her hard nipples against such tender skin. I bit around her waist, moved down to her pussy and pulled her pubic hair with my teeth, causing her to jump in pain. She grabbed my dick, pulling it hard, daring me to come. I refused. She grabbed my balls, squeezing just enough to get my attention. But the look in her eyes told me she could hurt me if she wanted to.
I pushed her legs wide apart, then slid my tongue in her pussy. She was so wet, my tongue was practically swimming inside her. I pulled my tongue out and used the tip to rub and twirl her clit, not stopping until she came hard on my face minutes later, my nose, eyes and mouth covered in her liquid. Even my ears were wet.
I turned her over, pulled her up on her knees with her ass in my face and began licking her anus. I had no idea why. I’d never done that before, never even thought about it. But I had to have Mrs. Adderson, couldn’t get enough of her. I think I wanted to know her soul. I plunged my tongue mercilessly into the small hole, pushing as deep as I could, opening it up. I couldn’t believe myself.
“Yes,” she said in a muffled voice, her face buried into the bedsheets. “Yes.”
I reached around her ass and found her clit, massaging it gently, then hard, then gently again until she came again, my tongue still in her asshole, searching for something deep within her.
I pushed her back on the bed, this time on her back, doing it as roughly as I could. Then I rammed myself inside her, hard and fast, not giving her small pussy any time to accommodate my dick, which felt as hard and thick as concrete. I began fucking her as hard as possible. She wrapped her long legs around me and squeezed me in a vice until it hurt. She even laughed a little.
I stayed in her as long as I could, pumping, endlessly pumping, slamming into her clit again and again, her hands pulling my hair and scratching my face. The night breeze, now a 20 mph wind, drowned out her scream as she came, followed by me coming, and screaming too. I was dazed by our savagery, our white hot fever. We were cannibals.
Then we lay sweating onto the sheets, gasping for breath. As the moments passed and a calmness came over us, she said in that quiet voice: “In the morning, Henry, I want you to make love to me, sweet gentle love. Will you do that?”
I don’t know if I ever replied. Exhaustion probably made it impossible. I slept.
Sometime before dawn, I awakened briefly to find myself spooning with her, her hips pushed up against my dick, the back of her legs resting against the front of mine. It was an exquisite feeling. Her eyes were open.
“Such a beautiful, beautiful boy,” she said softly. “A fellow traveler, I believe.” I fell back asleep, blissfully in love.
* * *
It wasn’t the morning sun that awakened me finally. It was the chatter of a colony of gulls outside as they glided by in their V-formation, low over the beach, a daily ritual on the Outer Banks.
Mrs. Adderson wasn’t in the bed, and I didn’t see her anywhere in the cottage. I suspected that she was sitting on the deck or, like thousands of tourists, walking the beach before the sun grew too hot. I headed to the bathroom to take a leak and noticed in the mirror the bite marks and scars on my shoulders and neck. Only some of them did I remember getting.
I looked on the floor of the bedroom to find my boxers — I was still naked — when I noticed none of her clothes were around. I did a 360-turn in slow motion, dreadfully realizing that all of her clothes, toiletries and luggage were gone. She had left without so much as a goodbye.
Frantically, I dressed, headed to my motorcycle and then 10 blocks down the street to the cottage’s leasing agency, hoping to get there before she checked out. I was too late. Worse yet, they had no information on her. She had paid everything, including her deposit, in cash, so they didn’t bother with license plate numbers or credit card information.
Back at the beach house, I went through all the drawers and closets, hoping to find something, anything. I ended up sitting on the bed, head in hands, crying for half an hour.
* * *
With the fall semester looming, I had only two weeks left until Labor Day, the end of the lifeguard season. Most of it I spent on the tower, repeatedly looking over my shoulder at the beach house. It was a senseless gesture, because just a day after Mrs. Adderson disappeared, a family with kids moved in for the next week. My heart was truly broken.
I went back to Syracuse but picked up my lifeguard duties at Kill Devil Hills for the next three summers before graduating. No sign of her. And, believe me, I looked. In time, I guess you could say I got my life back on track. From there it was on to law school and afterward joining a startup law firm with five other young attorneys in Baltimore, where I am now.
Along the way, I grew up, filled out, lost the freckles and some of the awkwardness, and I guess became decent enough to attract several serious girlfriends, actually three. Each was very pretty, smart and as my mother would often say: “came from good stock.” Each was the kind of girl to settle down with. But in each relationship, I would find myself lying in bed after making love, staring into the darkness, wondering why I was so dissatisfied. Each romance from there just wound down in a slow, sad death.
That brings us to last week when I came to work at 8 am on Friday and, with coffee in hand, signed on to look at my emails. More than 20 had added up over night, so I began looking down the list for the important ones.
And there, coming in at 3:20 am, was one listed from “A Fellow Traveler.”
It was a shattering moment. Before opening it, I sat back in my chair, waiting for my heart to quit pounding. Then I clicked on the email. There was no message, just an attached video. Clicking it brought up a small screen. The video began.
And there she was, Mrs. Adderson, right in front of me, close up, and looking right into the screen at me. She was sitting in a chair looking into what probably was a videocam on the computer. Her hair had more gray, a luscious soft silvery kind of gray, very becoming. Otherwise, she looked the same.
No smile, as usual. Just a soul-searching look into my eyes. She cocked her head to one side in a gesture that has been etched in my memory since the first time she did it back at the beach house that long-ago night.
I could tell there was sound, yet she said nothing. She stood up and behind her I could see a bed. Her bedroom? I wondered. She walked over and sat on it. She was naked and beautiful. She sat up with her back against the headboard and several pillows. She slowly spread her legs — wide, directly in front of the camera.
Her eyes still fixed on the camera, she began stroking her pussy with her fingers, then slid one fnger in her slit as she grew moist. I’m staring at that place between her legs, which I never thought I would see ever again.
After a moment, she leaned over and picked up something from the floor, a champagne bottle. Why was I not surprised? I’m watching, trying not even to blink. I want to miss nothing that happens, not even a millisecond.
I sat transfixed as she took a swig, then slowly inserted the neck of the bottle between her vagina’s lips. pushing it gradually inside her, deep in, all the way. I had no idea it would go that far. She then began slowly pulling it half way out, then sliding it back in, all the while circling her clit with the middle finger on her other hand.
Slowly, as the moments went by, she began breathing heavily, even loud enough to be picked up by the microphone, but still keeping her eyes on me. She grew more and more aroused and rubbed her clit faster while moving the champagne bottle back and forth, gaining momentum. Champagne began spilling out of her pussy onto the bed. Her nipples were hard. At the last moment, she pulled out the bottle and she came, her hips moving back and forth on the bed, her thigh muscles contracting, her breasts heaving. And at her peak I saw a small spurt shoot out from her pussy onto the sheets.
She calmly got off the bed and reached for a white T-shirt that she slipped over her arms before sitting back down in the chair, her face now once again directly in front of mine. No words. But she winked, a very slow-motion, deliberate wink, with her left eye. Then her hand moved up to the monitor and the screen went black.
But I caught a half-second look at the T-shirt and some writing on it: “Rosarito Beach” in large letters and below it the word “Baja.”
I looked for a replay button, but there wasn’t one. I got out of the email and re-entered. Try as I might, I couldn’t open the video again. I suppose it was somehow installed that way, to view just once. Is that possible? Maybe I could have tracked the video host, but am not sure they could tell me anything helpful.
By the time I went to the office Monday morning, I had found Rosarito Beach online. It’s a playground of restaurants and dance clubs in Baja California. I also had typed out my letter of resignation to a surprised bunch of friends.
On Tuesday, I gave the cat away. By Wednesday, half of my furniture was in storage, the other half trucked off to a homeless shelter. And for some inexplicable reason, I also sold my beautiful two-door Mercedes, a present to myself when I won my first significant case a few months earlier.
Just as unexplainable, I bought a BMW k1200, which I’m told is a nice road bike that does well on long cross-country trips. I’ve packed one bag and one bag only to strap on the back. Tomorrow morning I’ll gas it up and head southwest for what I guess will be a hard 10 days of riding.
I’m fully aware that my chances of finding her there are about one in a thousand. I mean, was the T-shirt a message to me, or just a T-shirt she threw on for the moment? Maybe she lives nowhere near Baja. Still, she had on the T-shirt and I don’t believe she does much of anything that is purely accidental. She’s a deliberate woman.
But why would she wait until now to contact me? She introduced herself to me as Mrs. Adderson. Was she really married? Is she still? Her name may not even be Anna Adderson.
She was right about one thing, though. We are both on the same path, bound together by this taste of white-heat living, these unknown pleasures. We are fellow travelers. I understand that now.
There are no other options for me. I have no choice. And maybe she knows that. I have to try. I need her. You see, I have this hunger.
Wish me luck.