Chapter 1

Everyone calls my father Doc. I got my father to sit with me not long ago to go over the story about how he and Jasmine got together. I taped the sessions, transcribed the interviews, pieced them together, cleaned up the grammar (I hope), and here’s the story. I elected to use my father’s voice for the story, but I occasionally filled in for one of the others involved. Conversations in quotes were as he seemed to remember them or as he paraphrased them for me. Occasionally, I felt compelled to fill-in some missing dialogue, especially when he was speculating about what someone else had said when he wasn’t around. I hope you like his story.

Phil (Doc’s oldest son)

I’d probably gone to a supermarket over a thousand times in the past thirty-five years since I’d turned twenty, yet that day five years ago turned out to be one of the most revolutionary and life-altering days in my life – actually, in any life I’ve ever known about. No one has life-altering events at the supermarket.

I’d gone again, as usual, to my nearest Publix Supermarket. It was crowded and the lines were long and not enough registers were open. I thought about how I’d often made my patients stand in similar lines sitting in my office waiting room, but those days had ended when I retired from the practice of family medicine. I had lots of reasons. The main one was that I’d lost the spark of life.

Edie had been my spark of life for just over thirty years ... and then she died. With all I knew about medicine, and with everything my colleagues at the hospital knew they couldn’t save her. Autoimmune diseases are a bitch. The one she contracted was deadly. She only lasted two weeks from onset to death.

I’d been devastated. I threw myself into my work, unsuccessfully. All I could think about was my loss and how I needed to recover, to get through the Grief Cycle, and to move into acceptance and get on with my life. I kept thinking that for a year.

The friends Edie and I had tried to coax me back into the land of the living. I either worked until I literally dropped in my tracks, or hibernated in my house avoiding all pretext at social contact. I’d lost my confidence. I’d lost the love of my life. To be honest, I cried a lot.

In my hermit life, I discovered sexual relief through pornography. I wasn’t even embarrassed by the practice of masturbation as I watched various videos. I developed a few favorites among the female actresses in the films, and even dreamed and fantasized about longer and more robust relationships with them. Questing for love, I imagined love affairs with a few.

And then I was in line in Publix Supermarket with a week’s worth of groceries. At least, I was eating better than I had the first six months after my loss.

The young woman ahead of me had long blonde hair with contrasting streaks in it to the middle of her back as well as a grocery cart half full of carefully chosen groceries. I noted they were all nonperishable. She wore a t-shirt for some band, modest shorts, sneakers without socks, and had a sleeve of tattoos along her left arm. There were also a couple of tats on her legs.

When she turned to look behind her, at me, I was dumbstruck. The young woman was Jasmine Jane, one of my favorites on the Internet. She smiled at me.

We all act impulsively from time to time. Sometimes we blurt out words we immediately wish we could take back. Sometimes those words hurt, but other times they are expressive, and sometimes, too, they change the course of history.

I blurted out, “Jasmine, I love your work.”

She looked surprised and did a double take at me. Yes, I’m middle age, but I’m not out of shape, plus after Edie died I’d lost twenty-five pounds. My bouts with booze had put some weight back on, but that had stopped. I’d even started to exercise again, although modestly.

Jasmine frowned and said in a low tone, “I suppose you’re some pervert and that’s your best pickup line.”

I shook my head, “No. I love you. What you do is of little import to me. I’ve seen you be expressive ... and ... well... “ I finally decided I should shut up and that I’d embarrassed her and me. Under my breath I said, “I’m sorry.”

Jasmine did a little harrumph and turned her back on me. I expected she got approached like I’d just done a dozen times a day. What she was doing in Sarasota, Florida, mystified me, but we all have to live somewhere. Her grocery cart proved she lived nearby, or she was buying stuff for a friend.

She put her groceries on the moving belt, and successfully avoided eye contact with me. I watched her every move. She was graceful yet efficient. I admired her selections of food; they were healthy for the most part. The tampons suggested feminine care. The shampoo indicated to me care for her gorgeous hair.

She was suddenly gone, having paid in cash by counting out every penny, but I did detect one last glance back at me as the clerk started to process my load of groceries on the moving belt. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I’d been a good boy and even brought my permanent bags to the store to avoid the plastic ones. I sighed and gave up on Jasmine, just grateful to have seen her once in my lifetime – for real.

A few minutes later I pushed my cart laden with my bags out of the store into the parking lot. I opened the tailgate of my SUV and started to put the bags inside.

From six feet away a female voice demanded, “You said you love me. Tell me why? What did you mean?” The voice was on the edge of antagonistic.

I turned and there stood Jasmine with her hands on her hips and a challenging look on her face. Her large sunglasses had been pushed up in her hair so I could see her eyes – they were narrowed into angry slits staring at me.

I spoke carefully. “Jasmine, my name is Doc Carter. I’ve been trained to watch people and impute things about them – people of all ages. I’ve watched many, many of your videos, and in the process absorbed a lot about you that I don’t think you intended to have your audience see and know about you. Of course, I could be wrong, too; depending on how good an actress you are.

“I believe you are a compassionate person struggling with some personal issues that produce stress in your life. I’m guessing that these transcend simple money issues in part because of various ways you frown or wince in some situations. I also see you as loving, but not in love. I don’t believe you are in a serious relationship, but that might be an outdated opinion based on the last group of videos you were in.

“I detected a fierce independence and an in-your-face attitude some of the time, but I don’t think you are normally confrontational. Maybe this situation proves me wrong.” I gestured to the two of us and tried to give a friendly smile.

“I impute that you are flexible and adaptive to various situations, friendly, a good conversationalist, insist on being respected and respect others, and expect to be treated fairly and equitably, even in erotic and sexual situations.”

Jasmine had been mute but carefully listening as I spoke. I finally shut up rather than keep rambling. After a short silence, she said, “And you got all that from watching me fuck guys in porn films?”

I nodded. “I have few outlets for that part of my life. Thank you for being part of it, as embarrassing as it is for me to admit that to you.”

“But you said you love me. You really mean that you love my work?”

“I love you and I love your work. They’re different. I had patients that loved me because I cured them or healed their child. My wife loved me because of the kind of person I was. See the difference?”

Jasmine asked with curiosity, “You used the past tense? Are you divorced?”

“No. Edie died about sixteen months ago. No one could save her.”

“Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.”

“Death is part of life. I’m still trying to move on, not all that successfully.” My voice dropped off.

“And pornography is part of your prescription?” she teased and chuckled slightly.

“Yeah, I guess so. I have needs.” I hesitated and added, “You’re so much prettier in person.”

“Thank you.” She looked at my cart, my car, and me. “Put your groceries in the car, and then buy me a cup of coffee over there at Starbucks.” There was one of the ubiquitous coffee shops about two hundred feet away. She turned and walked away heading to Starbucks. I took her offer to be a serious one.

“Gladly,” I said to her back and broke into a large smile.

Three hours and four more cups of coffee later, I asked her, “Can I buy you dinner?”

Jasmine smiled, “Yes, I’d like that. You should get your groceries home. The stuff that was supposed to stay cold is probably warm by now. Could we meet someplace?”

I said with some swagger, “I’m ready to go big on you. Any restaurant and menu item.” I realized how nerdy that sounded, but it was too late to back pedal.

She touched my arm, “How about Patrick’s downtown in an hour. I’ll meet you there. I’ll wait in front. Don’t keep me waiting.”

We met, ate, and sat in the restaurant until the maître d’ suggested that we might like to pay and move our enthralling conversation to another locale so they could close. We moved next door to a place called Mattison’s and got a table as far from the live band as possible so we could keep talking and hear each other.

We kept talking and asking questions of the other about their life, careers – such as they’d been, and our current situation. Around eleven o’clock, the band cranked up a hot dance number and Jasmine couldn’t resist; she grabbed my hand and pulled me up and onto the dance floor. I hadn’t danced so energetically for years, and made a note to do more of it on my own dime for the exercise value. At least I had been exercising, and that got me through that dance number and two more fast ones.

The fourth dance number was at the other extreme, a slow and romantic number. Jasmine melted into my arms, nestled her head into my shoulders, and started to sway in time to the slow beat of the music. I was quite taken with her by that point so just went along with the whole scene. I fell more in love with her when I held her that close.

At midnight when the restaurant-bar closed down I doubt there was any corner of either of our lives that we hadn’t touched on. We’d explored many in depth.

Jasmine confessed that her ‘real’ name was Jasmine Hanson and not Jasmine Jane, but that she answered to both because her ‘new’ name had been used so frequently over the past five years. She was twenty-four.

More interesting to me was that she liked working in the adult film business. The pay was not to be dismissed, little in the way of education was required, and she was good at what she did and knew it showed well on the videos. That said she had always needed another job to supplement what she got paid for the porn.

I explained I was really Robert Carter, MD and general practitioner, retired. I told her I’d picked up the moniker ‘Doc’ during my residency when the nurses needed a way to separate five of us on the medical staff all with the same first name. I’d gotten good at summarizing my thirty year career into a short few paragraphs, but she pushed me by asking questions about what I’d done, for whom, and when.

She told me how her blundering film career and odd jobs landed her in porn, and then how she’d gotten ‘discovered’ and then churned out over a hundred films and several hundred shorts. She’d recently come to Florida from the west coast to ‘shift gears’ and talk to the university about a scholarship or on campus jobs to supplement her income. She’d declared she was now more serious about getting a degree and wanted a career in nursing. She’d gotten a temporary job as a waitress but hadn’t started yet; I knew the place and it was a dive. I told her so. She didn’t expect to hear from the university for six to eight weeks.