Laura’s alarm clock aroused her at it usual ten minutes before five o’clock on Saturday morning. She reached over and turned it off, sliding her body to the edge of the bed and looking over to the naked body next to hers, now only partly covered by a sheet.
Without bothering to cover herself she shook the bed and woke him up. Feeling certain that she had obtained his attention and that he would know what to do, she headed for her shower. Somehow a shower, even a quick one like this one was destined to be, seemed to provide a symbolic cleaning from the previous night’s indulgences as well as providing well-needed cleansing for her body. Somehow she knew that having Lee over was not the best thing she could do, that she was now old enough and mature enough that she should have developed more permanent and better arrangements, but somehow she had never been able to get around to that. Lee was always available and willing to be called at her whim, it seemed, and he was pretty good at taking care of her urges, so once or twice a month she found herself entertaining him in her bedroom.
Lee did not rise immediately. He had been through this drill with Laura enough times to know how it played out. He had given her what she had wanted and was now just surplus protoplasm to her. He knew that she would be maintain an air of civility and after giving him a bagel and coffee, take him to his car and let him go away. He pulled the sheet off and spun his legs off his side of the bed. He saw a used condom somehow indiscreetly lying on the fitted sheet and unceremoniously tossed it into the waste basket. He thought of going to the shower with her to see if he could interest her in further liaison, but experience told him that once Laura was up, that getting to work was the only thing on her mind. So he just sat there and waited for Laura to came out
“Clean up if you want,” he heard her say as she left the shower, still naked and rubbing her towel over her still damp body. “I’ll get the coffee ready.”
He followed the cue and got up. He did not really like Laura’s shower that much. The nozzle sat a little low and the environment seemed just a little too feminine. While Laura’s bedroom somehow seemed genderless, something about the bathroom and shower just reeked of estrogen. Maybe it was the pink décor, perhaps the pink of the towels, or perhaps the bath and shower items from lines of merchandise obviously never marketed to people with Y chromosomes.
He knew where the guest towels were and grabbed one and quickly dried himself up. He left the bathroom and returned to the bedroom to retrieve his clothes at the same time that Laura was coming in from the kitchen to grab hers. They talked little as they dressed.
Lee had known Laura for the six years he had been in Conway Corners and enjoyed looking at the short blonde whose baseball-sized breasts seemed quite perky for a woman of her age. He knew that the two of them could never have a future together and that she knew that too and he appreciated the no-strings attitude of their liaisons. He knew that they were different kind of people. Laura’s coffee shop was undoubtedly profitable, but he couldn’t imagine that no matter how many hours she put into it that it could ever make her more than slightly independent, but it demonstrated a drive and ambition which he had never really for himself.
“You know, you really should try running that place nude some time,” he told her. “You do look quite good. You could make yourself quite a tourist attraction and you could raise the price to ten bucks a cup.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself,” Laura commented. She really did not think he was an Adonis, but he didn’t look so bad for a thirty-something American Literature teacher. “but it really is a shame that your best-looking parts are never in public view. I don’t suppose that your students will ever get to see that.”
“Well, we all got an email from the union Thursday that advised us to keep our clothes on even when this change comes about, at least when around our own communities. Their attorneys fear that community standards clauses in our contracts which might be construed to say that we have broken our contracts if we aren’t careful.”
“Somehow, I don’t think you’d ever have the fortitude to do it anyway. Some men are exhibitionists, almost, actually in many cases, pervertedly so. But I suppose that most of you are more comfortable keeping it all covered up. You probably will not mind that there are other guys who do strut things, but it seems that you all seem to think yourselves so vulnerable to have their units unprotected and on display. You guys all have a subconscious fear of having yourselves unprotected as if somebody or something is going to come up and do something to them. And none of you think that you are big enough and you’re all afraid that everybody else will learn what you have always considered a personal shortcoming or embarrassment. As for me, I am not sure that I really give a fuck about how much of me people see. I’m planning on going to Edna’s meeting on Monday and maybe on skinnydipping in her pool if somebody else is doing it, but I don’t want to be strutting my stuff at my shop and I don’t expect anybody who works for me to. I have worked hard to make the coffee and food the attraction, the magnet which draws customers and I don’t want to become the attraction myself. And I don’t want to pimp my staff which is what I think Donald and Edna want me to do. I imagine that that old pervert Donald would like me to shave too.”
“You look fine. Shaving would be just a gimmick. And it might be illegal if it seemed that there was a commercial reason for it. You go to Judy’s in Elmerton when they have the strippers and you can see that the ones who don’t have the rest of the act right -- the looks, the talent, the charisma – are the ones who are smooth.”
“I was there once when I was at Cherry,” Laura noted. “Some of us girls got brave once. I think that was back when they brought the dancers in only once a week, but I remember the smoke and the smell of stale beer which somehow seemed worse than in other bars and I remember the guys with the hard hats trying to get us to join the act and the way they looked at us. Some of the other girls got scared. I don’t remember feeling scared, but I do remember feeling very uncomfortable. And I started to wonder if the women who were working there were really happy doing it. A few years later I met a former dancer who had worked out of someplace in Indiana who told me that when she was dancing she felt powerful, that she was exploiting the suckers who were paying out good money just to look at her body, but I’m not sure I follow that. She might of believed it and maybe it was true for her, but it seems that the ones we saw were being exploited, not exploiting.”
By now they were both dressed and Lee had gobbled down his bagel and swallowed some coffee. He always wondered how somebody who ran a coffee shop would use Maxwell House at home, but he never brought the matter up. He was sure that it was indeed what she generally used when she was at home and not some way of slighting him.
They left her kitchen and entered the enclosed garage, getting into Laura’s five-year-old Toyota sedan. Laura hit the door opener button and they left and went to the place near downtown where Lee had left his car. This was the way Laura always wanted it when she brought Lee in for what she called “late night exercises.” She wasn’t particularly embarrassed to have him over, she told herself, but she didn’t want to advertise it, either. Lee accepted the arrangement as part of the process of being laid.
As he left her car she said, “Stop over for breakfast if you wish.”
He said thanks, but they both knew that he probably would not.
Without bothering to cover herself she shook the bed and woke him up. Feeling certain that she had obtained his attention and that he would know what to do, she headed for her shower. Somehow a shower, even a quick one like this one was destined to be, seemed to provide a symbolic cleaning from the previous night’s indulgences as well as providing well-needed cleansing for her body. Somehow she knew that having Lee over was not the best thing she could do, that she was now old enough and mature enough that she should have developed more permanent and better arrangements, but somehow she had never been able to get around to that. Lee was always available and willing to be called at her whim, it seemed, and he was pretty good at taking care of her urges, so once or twice a month she found herself entertaining him in her bedroom.
Lee did not rise immediately. He had been through this drill with Laura enough times to know how it played out. He had given her what she had wanted and was now just surplus protoplasm to her. He knew that she would be maintain an air of civility and after giving him a bagel and coffee, take him to his car and let him go away. He pulled the sheet off and spun his legs off his side of the bed. He saw a used condom somehow indiscreetly lying on the fitted sheet and unceremoniously tossed it into the waste basket. He thought of going to the shower with her to see if he could interest her in further liaison, but experience told him that once Laura was up, that getting to work was the only thing on her mind. So he just sat there and waited for Laura to came out
“Clean up if you want,” he heard her say as she left the shower, still naked and rubbing her towel over her still damp body. “I’ll get the coffee ready.”
He followed the cue and got up. He did not really like Laura’s shower that much. The nozzle sat a little low and the environment seemed just a little too feminine. While Laura’s bedroom somehow seemed genderless, something about the bathroom and shower just reeked of estrogen. Maybe it was the pink décor, perhaps the pink of the towels, or perhaps the bath and shower items from lines of merchandise obviously never marketed to people with Y chromosomes.
He knew where the guest towels were and grabbed one and quickly dried himself up. He left the bathroom and returned to the bedroom to retrieve his clothes at the same time that Laura was coming in from the kitchen to grab hers. They talked little as they dressed.
Lee had known Laura for the six years he had been in Conway Corners and enjoyed looking at the short blonde whose baseball-sized breasts seemed quite perky for a woman of her age. He knew that the two of them could never have a future together and that she knew that too and he appreciated the no-strings attitude of their liaisons. He knew that they were different kind of people. Laura’s coffee shop was undoubtedly profitable, but he couldn’t imagine that no matter how many hours she put into it that it could ever make her more than slightly independent, but it demonstrated a drive and ambition which he had never really for himself.
“You know, you really should try running that place nude some time,” he told her. “You do look quite good. You could make yourself quite a tourist attraction and you could raise the price to ten bucks a cup.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself,” Laura commented. She really did not think he was an Adonis, but he didn’t look so bad for a thirty-something American Literature teacher. “but it really is a shame that your best-looking parts are never in public view. I don’t suppose that your students will ever get to see that.”
“Well, we all got an email from the union Thursday that advised us to keep our clothes on even when this change comes about, at least when around our own communities. Their attorneys fear that community standards clauses in our contracts which might be construed to say that we have broken our contracts if we aren’t careful.”
“Somehow, I don’t think you’d ever have the fortitude to do it anyway. Some men are exhibitionists, almost, actually in many cases, pervertedly so. But I suppose that most of you are more comfortable keeping it all covered up. You probably will not mind that there are other guys who do strut things, but it seems that you all seem to think yourselves so vulnerable to have their units unprotected and on display. You guys all have a subconscious fear of having yourselves unprotected as if somebody or something is going to come up and do something to them. And none of you think that you are big enough and you’re all afraid that everybody else will learn what you have always considered a personal shortcoming or embarrassment. As for me, I am not sure that I really give a fuck about how much of me people see. I’m planning on going to Edna’s meeting on Monday and maybe on skinnydipping in her pool if somebody else is doing it, but I don’t want to be strutting my stuff at my shop and I don’t expect anybody who works for me to. I have worked hard to make the coffee and food the attraction, the magnet which draws customers and I don’t want to become the attraction myself. And I don’t want to pimp my staff which is what I think Donald and Edna want me to do. I imagine that that old pervert Donald would like me to shave too.”
“You look fine. Shaving would be just a gimmick. And it might be illegal if it seemed that there was a commercial reason for it. You go to Judy’s in Elmerton when they have the strippers and you can see that the ones who don’t have the rest of the act right -- the looks, the talent, the charisma – are the ones who are smooth.”
“I was there once when I was at Cherry,” Laura noted. “Some of us girls got brave once. I think that was back when they brought the dancers in only once a week, but I remember the smoke and the smell of stale beer which somehow seemed worse than in other bars and I remember the guys with the hard hats trying to get us to join the act and the way they looked at us. Some of the other girls got scared. I don’t remember feeling scared, but I do remember feeling very uncomfortable. And I started to wonder if the women who were working there were really happy doing it. A few years later I met a former dancer who had worked out of someplace in Indiana who told me that when she was dancing she felt powerful, that she was exploiting the suckers who were paying out good money just to look at her body, but I’m not sure I follow that. She might of believed it and maybe it was true for her, but it seems that the ones we saw were being exploited, not exploiting.”
By now they were both dressed and Lee had gobbled down his bagel and swallowed some coffee. He always wondered how somebody who ran a coffee shop would use Maxwell House at home, but he never brought the matter up. He was sure that it was indeed what she generally used when she was at home and not some way of slighting him.
They left her kitchen and entered the enclosed garage, getting into Laura’s five-year-old Toyota sedan. Laura hit the door opener button and they left and went to the place near downtown where Lee had left his car. This was the way Laura always wanted it when she brought Lee in for what she called “late night exercises.” She wasn’t particularly embarrassed to have him over, she told herself, but she didn’t want to advertise it, either. Lee accepted the arrangement as part of the process of being laid.
As he left her car she said, “Stop over for breakfast if you wish.”
He said thanks, but they both knew that he probably would not.
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