Chapter 1

When you are older than dirt, it takes a bit more than usual to raise your hackles. Having survived any number of threatened apocalypses, from Bird Flu to the totally fraudulent Y2K nonsense, to the end of the Mayan calendar, I take most everything I see or hear with a grain of salt. This e-mail subject line, however, totally floored me.

“Do the names Joanne Wilson and Syosset ring a bell for you?”

Do they ever! A well-remembered scene sprung fully to the forefront of my imagination. The luscious, Jezebel-like, tawny body of a young Joanne Wilson straining against all of her muscles to ride out the effects of the powerful orgasm my tongue had given her is still as vivid in my memory as it ever was and it happened nearly fifty years ago.

Joanne was the secretary to the president of the small company in LongIsland with which I was working. (The residents don’t voice a space between Long and Island, so why should I spell it?) She brightened what was otherwise a curious mixture of incompetence and corporate intrigue in describing my present situation.

I worked for a high tech defense electronics contractor in Florida. Our company had recently merged with a conglomerate that included Joanne’s company in their portfolio. Through some personal contacts, this small company had obtained a massive contract from the Navy for a system that they were totally unequipped to follow through on.

They were so ill-equipped to perform the required work that they did not even understand what would be required of them. Their comprehension was limited to counting the zeroes in the amount of the award. I was directed to take a team of six experienced design engineers to LongIsland for the summer, to create the technical specifications for the development of the various subsystems that would support the system requirements.

We were all completely unprepared for the LongIsland culture. We expected to be able to rent houses or apartments at a reasonable price, then learned that millions of Manhattan residents flock to LongIsland for much of the summer. The father continues working in the city and sends the family to LongIsland, visiting them on weekends. They commonly rent a house from a resident, who then goes to the Catskills. To put the prices in perspective, a summer rental there cost approximately the same as a new Volvo. This hardly fit our expense budgets.

To help us locate suitable accommodations, the president of the company assigned his personal secretary, Joanne Wilson, to help us, full time for a week. Not only was this lovely person hot, hot, hot, but she was sharp as a tack and had lived her entire life in the area. Using all her knowledge, skills and contacts, she managed to locate five prospective rentals, in the course of the week.

One of them was a huge edifice located in Oyster Bay. It would have housed at least four families, but we could not get any of our wives to agree to sharing a house. Another was a tiny house in Levittown. Levittown was famous as the first mass produced suburb in America. The name was synonymous with cheap and small. This one had been divided into a duplex! Two very tiny apartments had been created from one small house. The asking price was roughly three times our mortgage payments at home. The owner was a woman who said she was a cocktail waitress at a local club who had received title to the house in a divorce. As she extolled the features(!) of the micro-mansion, she kept crossing and uncrossing her legs, very, very slowly so that any one of us who cared to could have a good look.

All six of us were married and it is possible that any one of us might have done her if sufficiently inebriated, but no one was stupid enough to act on it in front of everybody. When she felt that we weren’t fully understanding her message, she upped the ante. She insisted that she be guaranteed an invitation to any parties we threw while living there. As a final incentive, she gestured toward the plaster donkey above the fireplace and reminded us, over and over, that “The ass goes with the house”, while uncrossing her legs again.

We couldn’t get out of there quickly enough. Meanwhile, we left our families in Florida and stayed in motels. We were allowed to go home for the weekend every three weeks if we could not find a suitable lodging.

I managed to find one way out near Port Jefferson, at Poquott. It was a sprawling old house that sat right on the bay and was usually rented to students during the school sessions. The rent was $175/mo for June and July and $3000 for August. Did I mention the Manhattan summer exodus?

It was quite a commute from Syosset to Poquott, but enjoyable on the way home. In the mornings, the expressway was simply a flexible parking lot. Coming home was much faster than going to work.

However, getting back to my e-mail, the memories of Joanne kept flooding in. I remembered being asked by her once to move her typewriter to another desk. After it was moved, she inserted a sheet of paper to test that all was well and her fingers made a sound that sort of sounded like a burp. Brrrrrp! When I looked at the paper, she had typed, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.”

Seriously. That is what she had typed in what seemed like an instant to me. I asked how many words per minute she could type and she claimed 250 wpm. Now, I took typing in high school and could type maybe 60 wpm, but she was much faster than four times my speed. I was impressed. This girl had beauty, brains, intelligence, personality and enough sex appeal for a dozen Hollywood starlets. I truly admired her and found her to be eminently fuckable. However, my position as leader of the group, operating in the confines of a sister company’s facility, combined with her position as personal secretary to the president of the company made me hold back.

After a few weeks, our group had been pretty well accepted by the employees of our sister company and even though we were all married, we were finding that there were several of the girls who enjoyed an evening out, especially as a group, which prevented too much gossip.

When we had a few drinks, some of the girls danced with each other, since we guys were still trying not to get involved, at least publicly. When Joanne danced, it was like watching a movie of a Voodoo priestess performing a dance to rejuvenate a zombie. Damn! It was hard to concentrate on anything else when she danced. The whole room sort of stood around and ogled.

Her coloration suggested that there might be some Voodoo heritage somewhere back up the family tree, but she swore that there wasn’t. I had my doubts, but it was a story that her mother stuck by and I never met her father.

As time went on and my family was still in Florida, Joanne and I grew closer and closer. Thought of candles and moths came to mind. We both knew what we were feeling, but she was a good Catholic girl and I was married. Nothing could possibly come of our attraction, could it?

Living in LongIsland was a hoot. So many things were different from the culture in which I had been raised. One of my favorite comedians was Buddy Hackett. I thought he was a hoot. The news was full of his coming appearance at the local venue, so I made sure to get a ticket. It was one of the most disappointing experiences of my life. Apparently, his local supporters thought scatological jokes were the pinnacle of humor. I’m far from prudish and would fight for his right to repeat the word, “shit”, all night long, but failed to find it funny and left after a few minutes, sorely disappointed and feeling as if I had been robbed.

I was living in the Howard Johnson motel, which had a situation I never encountered before or since, in any hotel. Ordinarily, the telephone extensions in hotels have the same number as the room. When this system had been installed, it had not been a requirement, I guess. When calling another guest, I could call the front desk to learn what number to dial for room number xxx. This was not a condition I would expect to remain in effect anywhere else, but it seemed to be ok with the management.

Another act that came to the local venue was Diana Ross. I was still smarting from my disappointment with Buddy Hackett and chose to pass on this opportunity. However, there was considerable evidence that Diana, herself, was my next door neighbor. The flimsy connecting door seemed in danger of splintering from the screams of anguish nearly every night. “Oh, God! Deeper! Harder! Give it to me! I’m cumming, I’m cumming!” and such like filled the air.

Bear in mind now that I do not know for certain it mas Ms. Ross next door, but she did stay in the same motel. Also, whatever exact words my neighbor uttered are lost in the mists of time. That was nearly fifty years ago.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes. How should I answer this e-mail? Was there any reason to deny my contacts with Joanne? My memories of her were very warm and positive, although she never said goodbye when she left.

One night, after a particularly erotic dance by the lovely Joanne, I invited her to sit with me in my car before we went to our respective homes. I complimented her on her dancing and told her how attractive I found her. We had a nice, open chat about things. She was as aware as I of the reasons not to allow our emotions to control our actions and I learned that she was still a virgin, which really surprised me. How could someone who exuded sexuality to such an immense degree be a virgin?