Chapter 4: JR

JR became ‘JR’ shortly after entering high school. Born Jean Randolph, she was one of a dozen other students with the first name Jean in the new school, but the only one whose last name started with the letter ‘R’. She went out for cheerleading, and there were already three ‘Jeans’ on the squad. Being the most junior, she was told her name was henceforth changed to ‘JR’. She thanked the Lord for them not giving her some other inane nickname. She excelled at cheerleading.

She thought ‘JR’ had a more mature sound to it, and a more important sound, too. Many of the dignitaries and celebrities she learned about in school were known by their initials, plus on Dallas there were the ‘Who Shot JR?’ episodes. She also learned about presidents (e.g., FDR, LBJ), and for a while aspired to that post until the reality that old white men ruled that roost became evident to her.

JR’s parents readily adapted to the new moniker. Her mother was Jane, and the two were forever being confused when someone called for one of them and slurred the name. ‘JR’ took hold in only a month.

JR was close to her parents and grew up seeking their praise and accepting their instructions. Her rebellion as a teenager didn’t take place until her last year or so of high school. One result was that she decided to leave home to attend college, going over a thousand miles south to the University of Texas.

JR discovered ‘boys’ in high school, although she considered herself a late bloomer. The part of her that bloomed late included her upper torso. She’d been almost flat-chested until her sophomore year, and then her growth hormones kicked in with a vengeance. JR went from barely an A-cup to a D-cup in nine months. Some of her cheerleading cohorts teased her about getting a boob job, but she rightly insisted it was all Mother Nature.

The change also made her curvier in other parts of her body as well. Suddenly, she had a shapely ass, and her legs got more definition. Her hips developed a natural sway and rhythm to them as she walked. Her face took on a sultrier look, especially her alluring eyes and lips. Her stringy hair suddenly developed a luster to its honey blonde color. JR became what one boyfriend called ‘sex on a stick’. She was one helluva cheerleader.

JR had considered herself unappealing up to the point that Mother Nature remedied the situation. She had a few friends that were male, but no real boyfriends the way the other girls on the cheerleader squad did.

During her first two years on the cheerleading squad, she learned a great deal about what the other girls were doing with their boyfriends. She also learned a new vocabulary that her parents never taught: blowjobs, handjobs and jerking off a guy, ass play, being eaten, cumming, orgasms, G-spots, tit fucking, and just plain ordinary fucking and variations on that theme.

When two of the girls on the squad had to quit school because of pregnancies, she also learned more about birth control than her mother had told her. She learned about how to manage boys from her friends, too; keeping them interested without needing to be the class slut.

JR had a string of boyfriends after that. She played the field and didn’t give up anything sexual too easily. By the time JR left for college, she’d shed her virginity and learned how to be an accomplished lover that knew how to consistently achieve an orgasm when fucking. Despite the tendency for girls to fall in love, she also continued to avoid that level of commitment with her dates, including some of the ‘steadies’ she went with during her four years. She had goals to fulfill. She was a career girl. She HAD to get that college degree.

JR studied business management not only as a profession, but as a passion. She finished on time and got a grunt job in Austin working in the marketing department of a medium-size software firm for an older man that took her on as a ‘project’.

Part of his project involved seduction, and three months after her employ she started to routinely find herself in a bed with the married man. She didn’t understand the role of the ‘other woman’ completely, only that she was one. He instructed her in how to behave in the office and how to let herself go wild when she was with him in a sexual way.

JR enjoyed the sex a great deal, even more than the boyfriends she’d had in high school and college. She was always ready to spread her legs for her boss, and learned that if she made him happy, he was prone to give her plum assignments that let her stretch her wings and discover that she had a natural knack for marketing tech products.

JR also learned she wasn’t the only ongoing office ‘project’. Apparently, many of the other older men in the company had taken on ‘projects’ the same way her head of marketing lover had with her.

JR fell in love. This was not the thing to do in an affair with a married man. One of the other girls in the office advised her of her folly. JR ended the affair after she realized how she had been frittering away some prime time in her life when she should have been developing more of a lasting relationship for herself, instead of being a toy bimbo for the exec.

The exec handled the situation well, gave her a great assignment, and hired another ‘project’ to work on and mentor. JR felt a little jealous, but rolled with the change. After all, she was the one that called the shot.

On the rebound, JR fell in love again with Matt Henson. Matt was a software engineer with the company and had been cognizant of and forgiving of her relationship with the head of marketing. JR dedicated herself to her rebound lover, later accepting his engagement ring and figuring that eventually she’d buy into the concept of marriage, kids, house, dog, and gerbil. They moved in together and started playing ‘married couple’ together. The sex was out of this world for her. Moreover, she could focus on her career.

Matt Henson presented well, and passed the simple tests that JR’s parents put before him. He said the right words, but after two years of living together JR started to doubt that there would ever be an actual wedding. Despite being engaged, Matt couldn’t be counted on to make a real commitment and set a firm wedding date.

The last nail in the coffin of her relationship with Henson came when she realized that he’d taken on a new ‘project’: a fresh-out female engineering grad named Drew that rated high on the cute scale. She followed the pair when they went to lunch after her suspicions went on alert, only the casual lunch between Matt and Drew turned out to be ninety minutes sequestered at Drew’s apartment.

By the end of that afternoon, JR had removed all of her belongings from the apartment she shared with Matt. She left the engagement ring on the counter in the kitchen without a note and temporarily moved into a nearby local motel. The next morning she appeared briefly, gave her notice at work, collected her final paycheck, and was gone.

Matt tried to call her repeatedly, but she never responded. She’d heard the term ‘ghosting’, and that was what she did. She never saw or spoke to Matt again. By the end of that week, she’d arranged for her possessions to be shipped to her mother’s home and gotten on a plane for Chicago.

JR hibernated for a month in the home she grew up in as she got her head on straight. She used that time to think about the trajectory she wanted for the rest of her life. She decided a husband or any other intimate person was unwanted in her new plan. She’d tried that path twice to no avail. JR gave up on men. Her career and business accomplishments wherever she worked would become her focus. She realized she needed some additional skills to accomplish what she wanted to do.

Over the spring JR made applications to several graduate schools and to several sources for scholarships and financial aid in the marketing arena. She ended up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at UNC in a two-year program leading to an MBA with a marketing focus. Further, thanks to a couple of scholarships, a job on campus, a summer intern program, tutoring income, and some work-study programs she found, she would graduate debt-free providing she ‘lived poor’.

Worthington Industries interviewed at the school, looking for a wide-spectrum of students interested in working for the conglomerate at various locations across the country. WI was the brainchild mega-corporation of billionaire Mark Worthington.

JR got offered a lucrative job in St. Louis, and took to the job with unbridled enthusiasm and her newly minted MBA. The culture of the business was nothing like the one in Austin where she’d worked. For one, there was no hanky-panky that she could tell of in the business. Her career was genuinely mentored without any extra requirements of an outside sexual relationship.

JR shined in her new job like a bright star on a dark night. Not only did she find innovative ways to get the subsidiary’s product in the news, she also created a half-dozen co-marketing and co-manufacturing alliances that propelled the consumer products business to the forefront of its segment.

Someone from HQ got wind of her accomplishments. She was plucked out of her subsidiary and put into another business division that was struggling on many fronts. In six months, under her leadership and personal efforts, the business had started to turn around.

JR got notice that HQ wanted her in Denver where another business was in trouble. She provided the leadership and enthusiasm that turned that company around within a year despite a recalcitrant CEO that later got replaced.

JR repeated her feat with several other rescues and then got to meet the man himself – Mark Worthington. Mark was well-known by that time as a liberal and visionary thinker, having multiple partners that he lived with who all knew about each other. JR went into the meeting alert for some sexual innuendo, but there was none. Mark told her how much she was appreciated, kicked her remuneration up another hundred thousand dollars, and asked what kind of a post would turn her on.

JR had thought about that, even while she was knocking everyone’s socks off. She told Mark, “I’d love to get in on the ground floor of some tech product – a product that will change how society functions, like the iPhone or iPod did. I’d love to get an equity position in that business, and feel like I was at the bleeding edge of being genuinely entrepreneurial. Sink or swim.”

Mark asked, “Have you ever thought of living in Florida – along the west coast?”

JR grinned, “No, but I’m ready to go.”

That afternoon, Mark introduced JR to Dave Prentiss. Dave was an easy-going guy from Sarasota that was just leaving a public utility after distinguishing himself there to takeover and run a new business that would be based around a battery technology one of the scientists in one of Mark’s labs had discovered almost by trial and error.

“Can you two work together?” Mark asked.

Dave shrugged, “I see no problem. The decision is JR’s. We will have a long road to make this happen, but it’s the chance of a lifetime. This is not a six-month turnaround. We are going to need someone that’s not just smart but brilliant, doesn’t just work hard but is a dynamo and leader, doesn’t just have ideas but is willing to steal and spring board off the ideas of others and make them our own, and isn’t just a workaholic but also a fun-loving person. I don’t want the traditional siloes that a business has. I want someone that can fill every position in the company, if need be, and shift from one to another instantly as we launch this thing. IF JR can be that person, let’s get to work.” He turned to JR.